


Shadow of the Stormbird

by queenofkadara



Series: The World and All Its Lessons: A Song of Aloy and Nil [4]
Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avad is a cinnamon roll, Breaking Up & Making Up, But there's only one true love for Aloy, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, F/M, First Love, NILOY FOREVER, Post-Canon, Romance, Smut, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-12-25 05:22:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 62,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12029034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofkadara/pseuds/queenofkadara
Summary: It's been two years since the Battle of HADES. Aloy spends her days helping the tribes to recover from the devastation of war, and spends her nights with Avad.It's been one year since Nil left her side.When a new threat from the Tenakth comes to light, Aloy realizes that only one person has the knowledge to advise the Sun-King… and the silver-eyed Carja killer is thrown into her orbit once more.****************This fic is a direct sequel toStormbirds and Stalkers, and is considerably more angsty/interpersonal drama.Eventual NSFW Niloy smut, of course. S&S readers know how I roll. <3 xo





	1. Don't Shoot

Dawn was breaking over the Sundom. 

The jungle air was cool and thick with early morning dew. Aloy leaned against the east-facing balcony and took a deep, fortifying breath of morning air while she enjoyed the sunrise. This suite, which Marad kept reserved for her frequent visits to Meridian, was the smallest one in the palace, and the only one in which Aloy felt comfortable spending several nights in a row. 

Since the Battle of HADES two years ago, Aloy had been travelling almost incessantly from the Sundom to the Sacred Lands and everywhere in between. As a woman with no particular loyalty to any one tribe and a love for all of them, she wanted to provide help as widely as possible. Happily, this also meant that Aloy could continue doing exactly as she loved best: learning and discovering more about every corner of her world.

Aloy reached into the pocket of her loose silk pants and pulled out a tiny ceramic green-and-blue Earth, a precious token she’d retrieved at Elisabet Sobeck’s resting place. And as she did on most quiet mornings, Aloy ran her fingers over the tiny Earth and puzzled about all the places on this globe.

_There were supposed to be nine Cradle facilities; All-Mother was just one of them. Where are the other eight? Further south even than the Bloodlands? Across entire oceans?_ Aloy thought. Although she had no evidence to prove it, Aloy was convinced that there had to be other people, other unknown tribes, somewhere in the world. There just _had_ to be. What were the chances that the Cradle facility at All-Mother was the only one that had remained active? It seemed very unlikely to her. 

Aloy sighed. These thoughts were the same ones she’d mulled over for almost two years with little to no further clarification, and as she often did, she rued the fact that she had no one to talk to about Zero Dawn. For the first few months after the Battle of HADES, she’d spoken to Nil about Zero Dawn, and she’d tried talking out loud to Sylens in the hopes that he would speak back one day and tell her something about the world. Aloy was even willing to put up with Sylens’ insufferable _smarter-than-you_ attitude if it meant she could have some answers. But as good as Nil had been at listening, he obviously hadn’t been able to provide clarification, and she’d stopped trying to contact Sylens after a year or so of no response.

Aloy quietly padded over to her bedside table and tucked the tiny globe into the smallest pouch on her belt. This pouch contained only two other items: her charm from Rost, and the first metal flower Nil had found for her on the Spearshafts, which she’d refused to sell to Kudiv. 

Aloy returned to the balcony again and took another long, relaxed inhalation to chase away her mild melancholy. Then, as she did sometimes, she whispered out loud to Rost in the jungle breeze. 

“The new Braves are shaping up well. I taught Sona and Varl how to make corruption arrows so they could anger the machines on purpose, have real targets with real danger to fight.” Aloy smiled to herself. “Remember how you made me take down that first Sawtooth on my own? You told me that you wouldn’t help me if I failed. But I don’t believe you,” she whispered. “You would have helped if I was in trouble. I know you, Rost.” 

She swallowed hard to clear the sudden lump in her throat, then smiled. “But I think it’s fair to say I’m a better machine hunter now than you were.” 

“Aloy? Who are you talking to?”

Aloy turned at the sound of the sleepy voice, then returned to the bed and sat on it cross-legged. “Just thinking out loud,” she explained. “Planning my day.”

Avad smiled drowsily at her, and Aloy smiled back fondly. His short, usually neat hair was flattened on one side, giving him a distinctly boyish look. “I wonder what it means that the Nora Huntress starts her day earlier than the Sun-King. I’m sure someone would disapprove,” he murmured. 

“Probably Marad,” Aloy chuckled softly. “You _can_ always get up earlier, you know. For a Sun-King, you almost never catch the sunrise.” This was one of Avad’s quirks that Aloy found most funny: when he had a choice, he preferred to sleep in, and she’d once known him to sleep until midday. 

“Or _you_ could come back to bed,” Avad grumbled with a slow smile, and he reached out to take Aloy’s hand and pull her towards him.

Aloy laughed and pulled away. “No deal, Your Radiance. I think you should come and see this sunrise. It’s especially clear today.” She rose from the bed to stand by the balcony again, then smiled winningly at him. 

Avad groaned and rolled onto his back, then rubbed his face and stumbled out of bed. Blearily he pulled on his silk trousers and shuffled over to join her, sliding his arms around her from behind. 

Aloy relaxed into his embrace, and together they watched as the first timid orange rays of the sun slatted through the thick foliage of the jungle. As the sun continued its inexorable rise, it gained confidence, its rays becoming lances of light that pierced the sky and painted the purple clouds with pale pink. 

Soon the sun was above the horizon, spreading its buttery yellow light across jungle and city alike, and Aloy turned in Avad’s arms to smile cheekily at him. “See? It was worth it, wasn’t it?”

Avad smiled sleepily at her. “It was quite beautiful. Thank you for sharing this experience with me. Now can we go back to bed?” 

Aloy snorted with amusement and gently pushed him away. “You’re such an ingrate. I can’t go back to bed after that display! _You_ go back to bed if you want. I’m going out,” she told him, and began changing out of her silk pants and into her favoured light Carja armour. 

Avad shuffled back to the bed and sat down with a sigh. “No, there’s no point staying in bed if you aren’t there. I’ll start my day as well.” He gave her a rueful little half-smile. 

Aloy smiled back quickly, but avoided Avad’s eyes as she buckled on her vest and her pouch belt. Sometimes when he half-smiled at her, the strange familiarity of _that_ particular expression on Avad’s face gave her a squirm of discomfort in her chest. 

Luckily, Avad didn’t seem to notice these little moments of aloofness. He ran his hands over his messy hair and yawned. “What are your plans for the day?” he asked. 

Fully dressed, Aloy felt comfortable to look at him again. “Trampler hunting,” she replied. “Then to Free Heap to drop the parts off to Petra. I should be back late tonight. But I might be moving on again tomorrow. We’ll see.”

Avad nodded in affable acknowledgement. When he and Aloy had first begun their liaison a couple of months ago, Aloy had made it clear that she would continue to come and go from the palace as she saw fit, and that Avad could not ask her for more than the nights that she spent in the palace. She suspected that his feelings for her still ran deep, but to her relief, he had never once questioned her terms and always wished her a fond but cheerful farewell when she left Meridian.

Finally Aloy racked her weapons on her back and turned to Avad with a smile. He rose from the bed and kissed her temple affectionately, then gallantly opened the door for her. 

“I will see you tonight, then?” he asked mildly, and Aloy nodded.

“All right. May the Sun shine on your hunt,” he said with a cheeky smile, and Aloy grinned, then gave him a quick kiss on the lips before jogging away through the palace. 

***************

Later that morning, Aloy was stalking quietly over a rust-red ridge of desert towards a herd of Tramplers. She would use her corruption-poisoned arrows to make the Tramplers attack each other, then she’d sneak into the long grass near their site to take down any machines that remained. 

As always before starting the hunt, Aloy tapped her Focus to see if there were any other hostile machines or humans nearby. To her surprise, the orange glow of a hostile human - a Tenakth, no less! - showed up in a patch of long grass about forty paces away, alongside the purple glow of a friendly Banuk. 

_Uh oh,_ Aloy thought. _A hostage situation, maybe?_ She would need to deal with this before taking out the Tramplers. Slowly and quietly, she began to sneak closer to the two humans. 

When she was only fifteen paces from the two humans, she silently pulled her bow from her back and nocked a hardpoint arrow, then aimed it at the Tenakth’s skull. 

“Don't shoot. They're with me.” 

Aloy froze. She was paralyzed with disbelief, a sensation like chillwater running down her back as she recognized that voice. It was a voice that she knew as well as her own and had once loved better than any other, but which she hadn't heard in a year. A voice which apparently still had the power to stop her heart. 

She lowered her bow. Then, slowly, Aloy rose and turned around to face the owner of that deep, sardonic voice, and her brain went fuzzy with shock as she met his pale silver eyes. 

_Nil._


	2. Shadow On Your Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy is left reeling after seeing Nil again for the first time in a year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Small edits since the Frozen Wilds DLC was released in November 2017.

“What are you doing here?” Aloy asked numbly. 

Nil’s lips lifted in a heartbreakingly familiar half-smile. “I could ask you the same thing. Out for blood, are you?” He leaned towards her conspiratorially. “I knew someday you'd cave to the thrill of the hunt. Though I'd prefer if you _didn't_ take out my crew.” 

Aloy took an unconscious step away from him as she fought for a suitable response. His sudden presence was overwhelming after a solid year of no contact. There were little changes in his appearance that jumped out at her like discordant notes in a song: his earlobes and the top of his left ear seemed reddened and chafed; his head was bare, and his hair was a little longer on the sides than it used to be; and he had a new scar at the base of his sternum that looked a few months old. But his voice, his damn voice, was the same as ever: sarcastic, poetic, smooth. 

Aloy clocked all of this in the span of a second. She'd once known his body almost better than her own, and she couldn't help but wonder if he was looking her over in the same way, cataloging differences, comparing now to… _then_. 

Finally she found her tongue. “I'm here for the Tramplers, obviously. What about you? And since when do you have a _crew_?” 

Nil looked over her shoulder towards the Tenakth and the Banuk and jerked his head to usher them over. Then he looked at Aloy again. “We’re heading north. There's a clan of bandits near Lone Light.” Then he gave her a feral smile. 

Aloy smiled back automatically despite the roiling of emotion in her chest. “Of course. Some things never change,” she replied playfully, then instantly regretted it when Nil’s smile faded into seriousness. 

“Hmm, yes,” he murmured, his eyes scanning over her face and body carefully. Goosebumps lifted on Aloy’s arms, and she tugged on one braid uncomfortably as she struggled, again, to find something to say. 

She was relieved when the Tenakth and the Banuk joined them. Nil jerked his chin at them. “Taran and Luka,” he said shortly.

Aloy nodded politely and introduced herself to the Tenakth man and the Banuk woman. Her omnipresent curiosity was peaked for so many reasons. She eyed Taran with interest, surprised at how mild-mannered he seemed. The only Tenakth warrior she’d ever met was Ullia, who’d been _extremely_ fierce and whom Aloy hadn’t been able to talk down before killing her, but Aloy had been fascinated by the hints of Tenakth culture hidden in Ullia’s dying speech. 

Luka was intriguing as well. Most of the Banuk that Aloy had met were men. The few female Banuk wanderers she’d met were machine hunters, but Luka was dressed in a curious combination of hunter and shaman clothing. Aloy had assumed that Banuk women couldn’t become shamans; after all, every tribe except the Nora seemed to try to restrict their women from doing one thing or another. 

But above all, what was Nil doing with a _crew_? Did he travel with them everywhere, like he used to do with her? If so, this was extremely surprising. Nil had strongly preferred being a lone traveller until he’d met her. She was the only companion he’d ever willingly stayed with. If he was travelling now with not just one, but _two_ companions… 

_People don’t change, Suntress. It’s time you accepted that._ Nil’s words were as fresh in her mind now as they had been when he’d first hurled them at her over a year ago, and Aloy rubbed her forehead briskly as though she could physically wipe them from her mind. If Nil was travelling now with other people, what did that _mean_?

“So the three of you travel around together hunting bandits?” she asked. Polite conversation, normal questions and answers, that was the ticket. That would make this whole situation less…discombobulating. 

Nil nodded, but Luka elaborated. “Mostly bandit hunting, yes. But sometimes we offer our services for pay as well.” 

Aloy raised her eyebrows. “What kinds of services?” _So they’re mercenaries?_ she wondered, with a hint of misgiving.

“Protection jobs. Hunting for machine parts, occasionally. We’ve done the odd revenge job here and there,” Luka said, and Aloy’s sense of misgiving deepened, as well as the start of an ache in her chest. _Revenge jobs? Like assassinations?_ Since when did Nil start killing just for shards? When they'd been… together, his killing had been governed by a strict (albeit twisted) code of honour. 

“You think we’re common thugs who sell ourselves to the highest bidder,” Taran suddenly said in a flat voice, and Aloy looked at him, surprised by the resignation and skepticism in his face. “Don’t worry, Nora. We don’t just work for anyone who waves shards at us.”

Aloy tilted her head. “So how do you decide what jobs to take?” 

Luka and Taran both looked at Nil, so Aloy did too… and felt a squirm of discomfort at the blankness of his face. His pale grey eyes were empty as they looked at her, and Aloy didn’t like it. He’d never looked at her this blankly before. 

When Nil said nothing, Luka answered Aloy’s question hesitantly. “Nil decides. If we disagree about a job, he vetos it.” She shot Nil another apprehensive look, then added, “He does whatever he thinks some person called Suntress would do.” 

Shock jolted through Aloy’s body, and her eyes flew back to Nil’s face. Then another surge of unwelcome, overwhelming emotion washed over her. His face was still unsmiling, but his silver eyes were now absolutely incandescent with longing. Suddenly it was like the year of silence between them had evaporated; she was pulled into his gaze as surely as though he’d cast a rope around her heart, unable to look away from the force of emotion in his eyes. 

Eventually Aloy forced herself to release the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “I should go,” she said bluntly. Under any other circumstance she would have loved to sit down with Luka and Taran and learn more about them, but she felt like she was teetering at the edge of a precipice. If she didn’t get away from Nil soon, she was going to implode. 

Nil nodded to her once in farewell. “Aloy,” he said, his voice polite but flat. 

_Aloy._ Her name, her real name on Nil’s lips... She couldn’t stand it. Suddenly her chest was too tight, making it hard to breathe, and without another word she turned abruptly on her heel and strode away from him, forcing herself to walk at a normal pace even though her mind was screaming at her to escape the heat of his gaze as fast as possible. 

As soon as she was a decent distance from Nil and his crew, she broke into a jog, no longer caring about the Tramplers for the moment; she’d find another herd closer to Free Heap. She just needed to move, to loosen the tension in her chest, to shake off the thoughts that were taking hold of her mind. 

But she couldn’t stop thinking about Nil. And suddenly her memory was flooded with the last time she’d seen him. 

*********************  
**One year earlier…**

Aloy jogged along the path leading away from Mother’s Rise. As she neared the mouth of the forest, she smiled at Nil. He was waiting for her at the end of the path, unconcerned about the suspicious and fearful glances of the other passing Nora. Aloy had (mostly jokingly) suggested that he try wearing Nora clothes in order to blend in, but to her total lack of surprise, he’d refused. He was unofficially the only Carja who was permitted in the Sacred Lands, and then only because Aloy refused to cede to the Matriarchs’ wishes. If it was up to Aloy, the Sacred Lands would be as open to the other tribes as the Sundom had become. 

But that was an issue to be tackled another day. 

“Ready?” she said as she drew level with him. 

Nil reached out and flicked a lock of Aloy’s hair over her shoulder. “Where to?” he asked.

“Mother’s Crown,” Aloy replied promptly. “I promised Sona I would help with training the Braves. We could use _your_ help, actually - a different combat style to practice against…?” She tilted her head winningly at him. 

Nil shook his head. “No. I’ll wait in the woods.” 

Aloy swallowed a spike of frustration and nodded acquiescence, and together they headed into the forest in silence.

Aloy kept a step ahead of Nil, her sharp eyes searching for ochrebloom and hintergold to collect for Mother’s Crown, but Nil’s silence weighed on her like a damp snowfall. She and Nil didn’t always talk while travelling, and she’d always taken comfort in Nil’s warm but comfortable quiet. But over the past few months, his silences had become more sullen, and he’d started making more wistful remarks about the growing numbers of bandits who were moving in across the Sundom and the Sacred Lands alike. He’d also become more recalcitrant about coming into settlements with her, choosing instead to remain outside of the villages on his own. 

It made Aloy sad. For a long time Nil had done exactly as he’d said he would: he’d followed her everywhere. Maybe with a sigh or a roll of his eyes, but he’d always come with her, his hand on her back and his deep voice in her ear, making snarky remarks to make her laugh and sort-of/ kind-of trying to participate in conversations with her friends. But as time had worn on, he’d started declining her invitations into villages and settlements, instead choosing to wait outside for her to finish her business and join him. 

Then, a few months ago, there was an argument. It had started after she’d had some business at Free Heap and Nil had declined to come into the settlement, to her surprise. 

“I thought you didn’t mind Free Heap! You stuck it out here for a month before,” Aloy reasoned.

Nil raised one eyebrow. “I had no choice. I only stayed that long was because I thought you would pass by on your way back to the Sundom.” He smirked at her. “If I’d known you were going to sneak up through the north first…”

Aloy smiled and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sorry about that. I just had to go and, you know, obtain crucial information that would stop us all from being annihilated by an insane subfunction. My mistake.” 

Nil smirked faintly at her, then sat on a nearby boulder. “You go on. I’ll wait here.” 

Aloy bit her lip. “I thought you liked Petra,” she tried again, in a last-ditch attempt to coax him to come with her. “She told me that you two bonded while you were here.” Aloy smirked a bit as she said this; it was something of an exaggeration, as Petra’s description of Nil was that “he’s obviously a few gears shy of a clockwork, but he’s nuts about you.” 

Nil gave her a chiding look as he fished his whetstone out of one of his pouches. “Suntress, how many times do I have to tell you? I don’t like anyone but you.”

Aloy pursed her lips and shrugged. “Okay. I just thought maybe you’d changed your mind.” She turned away from him towards Free Heap, feeling slightly hurt. 

“People don’t change, Suntress. It’s time you accepted that.”

Aloy stopped cold and turned back to him, feeling like a pitcher of chillwater had spilled in her chest. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” she demanded.

Nil wasn’t looking at her; his eyes were fixed on his whetstone as he sharpened his knife. Then he raised his eyes to hers, and that long-suffering look was on his face, a look that had become more frequent in the past few months. “These social calls grate at my skin like a dull blade on bone: they’re uncomfortable and dissatisfying. I’d rather it was just the two of us.” 

Aloy folded her arms. “Nil, I can’t do that. Everyone is still struggling after the Battles of HADES. I’m able to help, so I have to.” She stepped closer to him, anger starting to rise in her chest. “Come on, say what’s really on your mind. Don’t be shy. You think I’m trying to change you. Don’t you?”

He raised one eyebrow at her, then smoothed the stone against his knife. “Aren’t you?”

“No!” Aloy snapped, feeling stung. “Of course not. Why would you _think_ that?”

Finally Nil put his whetstone down and stared frankly at her. “I don’t like visiting the villages and talking to people. You know this, but you make me come inside anyway.” 

Aloy stared at him, breathless at the unfairness of this accusation. “You _said_ you would come with me everywhere! _You_ said that, not me. You’re the one who’s changing their mind, not me!” 

She glared at him, infuriated by the stony look on his face. Finally she shook her head in disgust and turned on her heel to go up to Free Heap. 

“Suntress.” His hand was on her arm, pulling her to a stop. Aloy pulled her arm from his grasp and glared at him. Despite her anger, part of her still hoped that he was going to change his mind, come inside with her after all. 

Nil stepped close and smoothed her hair back from her forehead with both hands, then slid his palms down to cradle her neck tenderly. A lump of longing rose suddenly to her throat as Nil gazed at her, his silvery eyes soft and conciliatory. But his words only salted her wounded feelings. “Is it really so bad to want you for myself? Just for a little while?”

“I don’t belong to you,” Aloy replied, making her voice hard in an attempt to counter her disappointment. When had she _ever_ tried to make him be anything he wasn’t? All she’d ever done was accept him, bloodthirsty and antisocial and all. She pulled away from his warm hands and stalked away from him and up the path to Free Heap. 

Since that argument, they hadn’t spoken again about Nil coming into the settlements with her. Nil had resumed accompanying her for a week or two, but his reluctance shortly took over again; Aloy would offer, Nil would decline, and she would go on her own while he waited. A new, uncomfortable tension had started to infiltrate their travels. Every night when they stopped to rest, Aloy would press herself flush against Nil’s body, wanting to soak up his heat and wash away the chill that seemed to be growing between them like frost on a spring leaf. Nil would wrap his arms around her tightly, and Aloy could fool herself into thinking things were as they had always been; after all, Nil wouldn’t hold her like this, touch her with the passion that he always had, unless things were fine. Would he? 

But in a brutal, honest corner of her mind, Aloy was starting to realize that it was an illusion. Something was wrong. A stitch in their relationship had been split during that first argument, and Aloy could feel it unravelling slowly. And she didn’t know how to sew things back together. 

They continued to pick their way through the woods towards Mother’s Crown in silence. Then suddenly Nil spoke. “Suntress…” 

“What?” Aloy said, then immediately regretted how harsh she sounded. She turned to Nil, purposely mastering her face into an open expression rather than the resentment she felt. 

Nil had stopped walking; he was looking off towards the east. He turned his head back to look at her. “Devil’s Thirst is just that way. Didn’t you say one of the villagers mentioned another group of bandits heading out that way?” He gave her charming smile. “It could be nostalgic: a trip back in time, to the place we first shed blood together. What do you say?”

Aloy wilted with exasperation. “Nil, not _now_. I have to take these resources to Mother’s Crown. We can’t always be hunting bandits!” 

Nil narrowed his eyes shrewdly. “But you would be helping people. Taking out the bandit threat is for the good of the villagers, isn’t it?”

Aloy scowled at him. He wasn’t wrong… but she was annoyed at his naysaying her. He was always _doing_ this now. “You said you would follow my lead,” she said shortly. “I don’t like having you question me all the time. It’s like having bloody Sylens following me around.” She folded her arms. “Why don’t you just go to Devil’s Thirst on your own? I’ll meet you there.” 

Nil ran his hand over his hair. “No. I’ll come with you.” 

“Why?” Aloy snapped. “You obviously don’t want to. I don’t want you to come with me if you’re just going to be miserable the whole time. Maybe you _shouldn’t_ follow me everywhere. You’re obviously not happy.”

She stopped, her chest heaving with the intensity of ugly, blunt honesty that had just poured unbidden from her lips. She folded her arms and bit her lip, unable to look him in the face. 

She heard the soft crunch of leaves and light snow underfoot as Nil stepped closer to her. Then his fingers were on her chin, tilting her face up to his. “Are _you_ happy?” he asked in a low voice. 

Aloy swallowed hard, her eyes still lowered. _Not if you aren’t,_ she thought, but that felt too honest to say. Too raw, somehow. 

Finally she lifted her eyes to his. “Go to Devil’s Thirst without me. I know that’s what you really want.” She was unable to shave the bitter edge from her voice.

Nil stared unflinchingly into her eyes, his fingers still on her chin. “I can see in your face what you’re really saying, Suntress. It’s not like you to mince your words. Say what you mean.” 

Aloy could barely breathe through the vice of pain that was suddenly squeezing her chest. How had this conversation even started? Why was he penning her into a corner like this? Suddenly she had no choice but to say the words that had been flitting through her mind over the past few months, but which she’d batted away for fear of the horrible consequences. 

She took a deep, painful breath. “I want you to leave. And don't come back.”

There. She’d said it. Nil had _made_ her say it. Aloy suddenly felt a surge of fury and pain that he’d forced her into this. She pushed his hand away from her face and turned away, wrapping her arms around herself as if that could protect her from the anguish that was threatening to drown her. 

Slowly Nil walked around to face her again, but Aloy refused to look at him, her eyes on the ground as she swallowed painfully. 

“Is that really what you want?” he asked gently.

 _No._ Of course it wasn't. But there was no choice. He wasn't happy following her, and Aloy couldn't carry that burden anymore. “Yes,” she whispered.

Nil was quiet for a long time. Aloy clenched her jaw; his silence was unbearable. Finally he spoke, and his voice was flat and emotionless, a stark contrast with his words. “I won't force my company on you if that’s your wish. But I'll carry you like a scar beneath my ribs. You’ve defeated me in this, but I'll always cherish the fight.” 

Tenderly Nil tucked one of her braids behind her ear, and his familiar wordless gesture of love was so dear to her that Aloy couldn't stop the sudden sob that burst from her chest. Tears slid down her face, and she covered her mouth with one hand to stifle the sound. 

Nil wiped away the tears from her cheek with his thumb. Finally Aloy raised her eyes to his, but the blankness in his face just made her sob harder. Then Nil spoke again. “Don't be sad, Suntress. Don't let me be a shadow on your heart. You're a Stormbird. _You_ throw the shadows over this world.” And without another word, he turned and walked away from her into woods.

Aloy didn’t see or hear from him again.

********************

**Present day...**

The vile emotions from that horrible day surged again in Aloy’s breast, as sharp and painful as they had been a year ago. She broke into a sprint as though she could outrun the pain, uncaring of the noise she made. She would almost welcome a Ravager attack now; it would give her something concrete to tackle, something solid and quashable, unlike the treacherous feelings that were pushing through her heart, blooming again although she'd tried to cull them. 

Some time later as she neared Free Heap, she spotted a second herd of Tramplers. This time, there was no silent approach. Aloy slid into the grass near to the Herd, then surged from the grass like a Sawtooth and stabbed the nearest Trampler with her spear. 

The herd shrieked in alarm, and the sound was welcome to her, drowning out the sounds of her own memories. Aloy grinned with wild abandon as she swung her spear back and slammed it into the sparking Trampler’s lens, sending glass and sparks flying. 

This was something she could handle: metal sparking, the threat of death by machine. This was something she could master easily. 

Her grief about about Nil leaving her, about sending him away, was too much. It was too big of a problem. But a herd of enraged Tramplers?

Easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shy wave* Hey guys! It's me... Cowering here in the corner hoping no one wants to throw rotten fruit at me...
> 
> Let me know what you think so far. <3 xo


	3. Numb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy gets some welcome relationship advice from Vanasha. Meanwhile, Nil is also reeling from seeing Aloy again after a year of silence.

Mid-morning the next day, Aloy jogged into the palace and towards her little suite to bathe. She’d ended up staying the night in Free Heap, taking comfort from Petra’s earthy sensibilities and comforting stories, and she felt much more like herself this morning. 

As she neared her quarters, she heard Vanasha’s sultry voice behind her. “Aloy! Where have you been? The Sun-King was pining for you last night.” 

Aloy pushed open the door to her quarters and threw Vanasha an exasperated look as she stepped inside. “Don’t exaggerate. Avad doesn’t pine. He expresses regal wistfulness.” She smirked at her friend, and Vanasha laughed as she stepped into Aloy’s quarters. 

Aloy and Vanasha had grown close over the past two years. Their modes of operation were so different, and this made Vanasha very interesting to Aloy: Aloy was always direct bordering on blunt, and she relied on her skills and her laundry list of successful deeds to gain influence. In contrast, Vanasha used a powerful combination of seduction, manipulation, and sheer reasonable logic to gain influence. But both women had one significant thing in common: many of the Carja underestimated them. A few months after the end of the Battles of HADES, when Vanasha had been met with an unreasonable number of roadblocks from the men in power in her plan for getting food supplies to the decimated villages, Vanasha and Aloy had found themselves sharing too much wine and commiserating about how idiotic Carja men could be. The next day, Aloy had marched straight to Avad and demanded that Vanasha be officially accepted as a member of his advisory council, with a long list of Vanasha’s skills and deeds to back up her demand, and Avad had immediately agreed. Now, Vanasha and Aloy were the first two women to ever be counted among a Sun-King’s trusted advisors, though Aloy’s role was more of a consultant given her constant comings and goings.

Aloy started to run herself a bath and stripped quickly as Vanasha draped herself comfortably on Aloy’s chaise-lounge. “In all seriousness though, Avad is looking for you. He’s called a council meeting today at noon. Marad apparently has some bad news.”

Aloy frowned as she stepped into the bath. “Bad news? About what?” She sank into the tub until she was submerged completely and ruffled her hands in her hair to loosen the dirt and sweat.

When she surfaced, Vanasha shrugged elegantly. “No idea. I only just found out that there was news. I’m glad I found you. I think Avad was ready to send a messenger out to Free Heap.” 

Aloy winced as she grabbed the soap and briskly began soaping up her legs. “Damn. I did tell him I’d be back last night. I got held up.” 

“You? Held up due to a hunt? You must be slipping,” Vanasha quipped, and Aloy flicked some water at her in annoyance. “No, not because of a hunt. It was…” She hesitated as a pang of sadness from yesterday flickered in her chest. Did she want to tell Vanasha about what had happened? It might just make her feel worse. Maybe it was better to put it behind her.

But Vanasha had a sixth sense for intel and gossip. It was part of what made her such a good advisor. She leaned towards Aloy, her dark eyes sparkling with intrigue. “Something happened. Tell me,” she urged. 

Aloy swallowed. Talking about emotional issues with friends still made her uncomfortable, but if anyone Aloy knew could provide advice in this arena, it was Vanasha. “I ran into Nil,” she said bluntly, then submerged her head again. 

When she rose from the water, Vanasha was grinning at her. “The Pet Prince, hmm? It’s been a while.”

“A year,” Aloy said shortly, then began lathering her hair. 

Vanasha leaned back and rested her cheek on her fist, her eyes bright with interest. “So? What happened?”

“He’s travelling with two others now. A Banuk woman and a Tenakth male, of all people. They hunt bandits and do odd jobs.” Aloy paused. “He looked… the same. But not. I don’t know.” Feeling distinctly uncomfortable, Aloy sank beneath the water again and vigorously rinsed her hair.

She surfaced again and began to squeeze the excess water from her hair, unable to meet Vanasha’s eyes. “It made me think, I guess. About… when we separated.” Aloy shrugged. “It didn’t feel great.” _Understatement of the year,_ Aloy thought to herself, remembering the raw grief that had struck her anew yesterday. 

“It never does,” Vanasha drawled, and Aloy finally looked at her, suddenly eager for Vanasha’s perspective. “Running into an ex? Utter disaster, always. Very awkward. Just do what I do and pretend all your exes are your best friends. That’s how I deal with Uthid. Otherwise he clams up and becomes _very_ awkward indeed.” Vanasha smirked at Aloy. “Not a very useful trait in a military commander.” 

“How are you able to _do_ that?” Aloy demanded as she rose from the bath and grabbed her towel. “I don’t think I could do that. Just pretend everything is fine when it’s not.” 

Vanasha frowned slightly at Aloy. “You know it’s normal to feel conflicted about your first love, right?”

Aloy stared at her in surprise. “It is?”

Vanasha barked out a laugh. “Sometimes I forget how young you are. Yes, little huntress, your first will always have a special place in your heart. But that doesn’t mean they’re the be-all and end-all.” She settled back on the chaise lounge and delicately rearranged her skirts. “The Pet Prince will fade in your mind eventually. Give it time. Besides, Avad is a much better catch. A little too goody-good for me,” and Vanasha grinned wickedly at Aloy, making Aloy roll her eyes, “but he’s a kind man. And a good king. He’s a smart choice for you.” 

Aloy gave Vanasha a small smile as she walked over to the small chest where she kept her clothes. Vanasha’s words were reassuring; it was nice to know that these residual feelings she had for Nil were normal, and that they would fade in time. 

_But do you want them to?_ A tiny voice in the back of Aloy’s mind piped up, the same voice that inserted Nil’s face into her mind sometimes at night in that limbo between sleep and wakefulness, and Nil’s voice into Avad’s mouth sometimes when they were moving together in the dark. 

She pushed the voice away. _Vanasha knows what she’s talking about,_ she thought firmly. 

Aloy just needed a little more time. And in the meantime, she and Vanasha had a council meeting to attend.

*******************

A short time later, Vanasha and Aloy walked into the Sun-King’s council room to meet with Avad and the rest of the council. Like almost all areas of the Sun-King’s quarters, the space was open with wide balconies and no windows except for the pull-out wooden doors that could be used in times of storm. The room’s dominating feature was a large and ornately carved wooden table with a glass-smooth polished surface that could be used for any number of strategizing activities. There were carved wooden chairs around the edges of the room, but unless the council meetings were anticipated to be particularly long, the Sun-King and his councillors tended to stand during these meetings. 

Avad turned as Vanasha and Aloy approached the table, his warm brown eyes honing straight onto Aloy’s. He smiled at her and extended an arm to her. Aloy smiled back and grasped his forearm in greeting, then gave him a chaste kiss on the cheekbone before taking her customary place beside Vanasha. Their liaison was something of an open secret; it was known to everyone on the council but never discussed, especially since Aloy had thus far rebuffed any possibility of a more permanent union between herself and Avad, and thus their relationship had no impact on the governing of the Sundom. 

“I stayed at Free Heap last night,” Aloy told him in response to his unasked question. “Trampler hunting took a little longer than expected.” 

Avad nodded with a smile of acknowledgement, then greeted Erend, Marad and Uthid as they arrived together. Once everyone was settled around the table, Avad turned back to them, his hands clasped authoritatively behind his back and his face drawn in a frown. For the first time that day, Aloy noticed the lines of worry on his forehead, and felt a pang of foreboding.

“Marad has received word of a new threat from the South,” Avad told them without preamble. He then turned to the older gentleman. “Marad. Please tell us what you’ve learned.”

Marad nodded once, then looked around the table. “The Tenakth are moving against the Utaru. One my informants found an injured Utaru in the vicinity of Sunstone Rock. She was sent as a messenger by their governor to request our aid. As you all know, the Utaru are primarily a peaceful society. They have no formal military or combat training. And they are requesting the aid of the Sundom in protecting themselves, as recompense for the atrocities committed against them during the Red Raids.”

Avad nodded his thanks to Marad, then turned to the table. “I will be honest and tell you that my first impulse is that I would like very much to help the Utaru. But the Sundom is still recovering from the Eclipse War. I am concerned about spreading our already-stretched resources too thinly by helping an outside tribe.” 

Marad nodded thoughtfully at this, but Aloy spoke up. “The Sundom has a responsibility to help. You may be weakened from the war, but you’re still the strongest tribe in the known world. If not for the Red Raids, the Utaru might not have been so vulnerable as to be such a tempting target for the Tenakth.” 

Vanasha nodded, then said, “Consider the long-term profits as well. This could be an excellent opportunity to form an official alliance with the Utaru. They live on the most fertile lands in the known world, and the Sundom is still low on food since the War. If we help them, we could stand to benefit greatly from the bounty of their harvest.” 

Marad raised his eyebrows respectfully, and he and Avad both nodded acknowledgement of this. But Uthid leaned forward. “The Tenakth are a fearsome enemy. If they’re gearing up to attack the Utaru lands, we may be facing a battle similar to that of the Ninth Sun-King Ranan. And we know nothing about Tenakth battle strategies. Or about Tenakth culture, in general. It’s extremely inadvisable to go into battle uninformed about our enemy.” 

_Oh. No,_ Aloy thought suddenly. _Oh no._ She knew something that everyone else at the table didn’t. 

There actually _was_ someone in the Sundom who knew about Tenakth culture.

Aloy fought a rising wave of hysterical laughter as Erend piped up. “That’s true. But there must be someone who knows how to fight Tenakth, right? An academic, or a general or something? I can’t believe that none of the Carja know anything about Tenakth warriors.”

Aloy swallowed hard and ensured that her face and voice were perfectly bland when she spoke. “If we want to help the Utaru, we need a consultant who can inform on matters of the Tenakth. As it turns out, we all know a former Carja soldier who lived among them for a time.” And now she looked directly at Avad, allowing a wordless apology to enter her eyes. 

He gazed at her in confusion, then a cascade of emotions washed over his face: comprehension, then shock, then dismay. “Oh,” he said blankly. “You mean…”

Aloy nodded once. “Nil.”

**********************

Nil stared at the flickering flames of the campfire. His face was blank, but his mind was roiling. 

He felt the same about her as he had a year ago. Nothing had changed. 

He didn’t know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. 

Nil had never paid much attention to the passage of time. As a man who’d always done whatever he liked whenever he felt like it, time hadn’t meant much to him. But after Suntress had sent him away, he’d acutely felt the passing of every day. Every week that went by had felt like a knife being drawn along the same spot on his skin, becoming more tender and sore with every score. 

When he’d first left Suntress’s side, he’d gone north. He’d never been far north before, and he knew she was unlikely to go there, since she was so busy with the fucking Sacred Lands and the fucking Sundom. Besides, he felt like being cold. The legendary ice and early darkness of Ban-Ur sounded like it would match the feeling in his chest. 

As he travelled north, he started to feel numb and blank. It was like returning to the way he had been before, back before she’d burst into his life like an exploded canister of blaze. 

It was both a comfort and a curse. 

When they’d first parted, Nil had told Suntress that he would always be glad he’d known her. But as he continued to move further north, he wondered if that had been a lie. Maybe he would have been better off if they’d never met. What use was it to be so deeply tied to someone when they didn’t want you anymore? What was the point of love if it crushed you so thoroughly just to leave you gasping for air when it was gone?

Nil didn’t have the answers. He wished he wasn’t asking for them in the first place. So he kept moving north.

It didn’t take long for his body to become as numb as his mind. Nil was an experienced traveller, but when he’d started moving north, he hadn’t been… in his right mind. As a consequence, he didn’t have the appropriate gear to withstand the dramatically dropping temperatures. Soon, his body had started slowing down, then his mind. Eventually he’d decided that sleep would be a good idea. Sleep would make him feel better, clear his mind, erase the horrendous ache in his chest. 

He wasn’t entirely clear on what had happened then, except that when he woke up he was in a tent, and a young Banuk woman was staring at him with the clever black eyes of a crow. Luka had saved him from the snow, brought him into this tent and fed him hot broth. 

Luka had saved his life. For months afterwards, he half-wished she hadn’t. 

It turned out that Luka was also a lone traveller, banished from Ban-Ur by her werak. She was seeking knowledge of the machine songs, and asked Nil if he wanted to travel with her. He’d shrugged, genuinely not caring what he did at that point. 

When Nil was well enough to move again, they travelled south back towards the Sundom. Nil had insisted on remaining along the borders, thinking they were less likely to run into Suntress that way.

Eventually, some of Nil’s numbness began to wear off, and he eventually regained interest in his first love: bandit hunting. And for the first time in months, he could see a bright side to Suntress sending him away: he was free to hunt as much as he liked. Fortunately, the bandit clans were becoming bold again in the wake of the Eclipse War, so his prey - previously so scarce, thanks to himself and Suntress - was becoming replenished. 

Luka wasn’t a great partner. She was a stronger hunter of machines than humans, and at first Nil felt pangs of longing combined with frustration when Luka missed her shot or when a bandit struck her. But eventually he got used to her fighting style, giving her the lead with close combat while he took bandits out at longer range with his superior aim. 

Nil and Luka had been travelling together for a few months when they came across Taran in the west. Upon recognizing Taran as a Tenakth, Nil had immediately attacked him, seeking the euphoric rush of a good fight. Taran hadn’t disappointed, and their fight had ended in a draw: Taran’s spear had pressed into Nil’s abdomen just under his ribs while Nil’s knife had scraped against Taran’s windpipe. 

To Nil’s utter shock, Taran had dropped his spear and ceded the fight, requesting that Nil spare his life. Nil had been disgusted; what kind of Tenakth willingly gave up the fight? But Luka had pleaded with Nil to let the other man free, to hear what he had to say. 

The Tenakth didn’t formally cast out members of their tribe, but sometimes a Tenakth would leave the Bloodlands if they couldn’t survive the Tenakth’s ways. Taran explained to Nil and Luka that he wanted to build something of his own, that he didn’t want to just be a reaver anymore. But Nil knew the real reason why Taran had left: he wasn’t fierce enough. Nil was a better Tenakth warrior than this man was.

Before Nil could say anything, Luka had invited Taran to join them, and to Nil’s surprise, he didn’t bother to naysay her. He was already stuck with one travelling partner that he didn’t particularly want. What difference would a second one make?

And so Nil, Luka, and Taran travelled around the outer borders of the Sundom, killing bandits and scavenging. Unfortunately the War had taken a toll on everyone, and bandits didn’t carry as many riches as they used to. Eventually the motley threesome were in need of shards. 

Nil surprised himself by suggesting they offer their services for pay or trade. Between the three of them, they boasted an interesting range of skills: Luka was an excellent machine hunter, Taran a excellent warrior, and Nil himself was excellent at kills of both kinds, having learned much from Suntress about taking down machines. 

They became mercenaries of a sort. Nil wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, but he had somehow become the de facto leader of their little group, deciding where they went and what their next job would be. 

One day, after eliminating a small group of bandits who had taken over a farmstead, Nil stopped Taran as he was looting the farmstead’s stores. 

“Why?” Taran frowned. “We need these resources. We’re low on shards and just about everything else.” 

But Nil remembered seeing a family on the side of the road as they’d travelled to this farmstead. The mother had called out to them, asking for help, but they hadn’t stopped since it was clear the family had nothing to offer them. But while slitting a bandit’s throat, Nil had been distracted by thoughts of that family, and by sudden, unwelcome thoughts of a certain red-haired Nora huntress. 

_The strength to stand alone is the strength to help those who can’t._ She’d always said this, and Nil had never agreed with it. He still didn’t agree with it now. Nil was a firm believer in survival of the fittest. But for some reason, he couldn’t shake Suntress’s words from his mind. 

Taran reached into the barrel of dried fruit again. Nil’s hand snapped out, and he pulled Taran close, his fist wound tightly in Taran’s beaded collar. “Leave it,” he growled. 

“What’s going on?” Luka said as she entered the room, her eyes darting between them. 

Nil cut his eyes to her, his fist still grasping Taran’s collar. “Loot the bandits only. Leave everything else.”

It was Luka’s turn to frown. “But this farm is rich with resources. We need to stock up. Why would you leave all of this behind?”

“Because it’s what Suntress would do,” Nil replied, and released Taran’s collar. 

“Suntress? Who’s that? What kind of name is that?” Taran rasped. He rubbed his throat and glared at Nil. 

Nil stared at him until the other man quailed. “Loot only the bandits. Then we’re leaving.” 

Thus began a new and strange way of life for Nil. For reasons he wasn’t entirely sure of, he tried to stick to Suntress’s code as they travelled, with the exception of prioritizing bandit hunting over everything else. When he thought of her and what she would say about the different jobs that were offered to them, he somehow felt soothed. Like he was close to her, even if he wasn’t. 

Again, Nil wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. 

Yesterday when he’d mounted that rise and saw Suntress crouched in the grass, he’d thought he was hallucinating. After a full year of not seeing her, of not hearing her voice, suddenly there she was, larger than life and brimming with all the passion that he now lacked so sorely. 

Immediately he’d known with utter certainty that his year apart from her had changed nothing. He loved her just as much as he had when she’d first pushed him away. 

Luka passed him a piece of roasted boar, and he took it silently. He chewed the meat slowly, then took a sip of Scrappersap from his golden flask before passing it to the others. Earlier that day he and his crew had killed the bandits near Lone Light, and as per Suntress’s code, Nil had ordered them to take nothing but the loot from the bandits’ bodies, ignoring the gratitude and praise rained on them by the little settlement. 

After finishing his meal, he stretched his legs out by the fire, his gaze still roving pensively over the flames. Nil had never had long-term plans for his life. He tended to live in the moment, not planning farther ahead than the next day. After meeting Suntress, all he’d known about his future was that he wanted her in it, a torchlight guiding him forth. 

Nil wasn’t sure when he’d started resenting the direction that her torchlight pulled him in. He could admit to enjoying the freedom to kill that her banishment had given him. But after seeing her yesterday, he knew with a blood-deep certainty that Suntress’s torchlight was far preferable to the empty void that greeted him instead. 

And now that Suntress was gone again, that was a problem. 

Suddenly Luka raised her bow and pointed it into the darkness. “Who’s there?” she called. 

Nil shook his head in annoyance. He wasn’t afraid of bandits or marauders, but when Luka announced her alertness like that, it took away the element of surprise, made their crew more vulnerable to a desperate head-on attack. He pulled his knife from its sheath and stood. 

“Nil.” 

His eyes widened in shock as Suntress stepped out of the gloom and into the firelight. She nodded politely to Luka. “Sorry to startle you. I can be very stealthy.” 

Nil smirked, his memories flooded by a Stalker hunt from so long ago. He tossed his knife in the air and caught it deftly before sheathing it. “Twice in the space of two days? The stars must be aligned behind the Sun to bring us together this way.” Ah, sarcasm and humour, his old friends. As always, they were a comforting blanket to smother his uncertainty. 

Suntress smiled slowly at him. “Yeah right. I know you don’t believe in any of that.”

Nil shrugged easily, feeling more relaxed at how relaxed _she_ appeared to be. “You’re right, I don’t. So what can we do for you?”

Suntress ran her fingers through her hair and tugged one braid: a sure sign of discomfort that automatically had his interest piqued. Then she shook her head quickly and stood up a bit straighter. “The Sun-King would like to formally request your aid in a matter of Sundom security,” she reeled off.

Nil raised one eyebrow at her and folded his arms. “Is that supposed to mean anything to me?”

Her hazel eyes sparkled in the firelight, and her fine lips quirked in a rueful little smile that squeezed his heart. “Of course not. So put it this way: I have a favour to ask you.”


	4. Suntress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil comes to Meridian to advise the Sun-King's council, and Aloy has a hard time coping with both him and Avad in the same room.

Aloy, Nil, Luka and Taran arrived in Meridian the following afternoon. Nil had courteously offered for her to camp with them overnight and she’d agreed, seeing as there was no way to refuse without being awkward. 

But Aloy didn’t sleep. It was just too _strange_ being near him again, and there was too much tension in the air. She’d settled on the opposite side of the fire from him, but after lying on her side for a few hours without being able to sleep, she’d eventually sat up and occupied herself by crafting arrows. Through the dancing flames of the campfire, she watched Nil surreptitiously as he sharpened his knife. When the slow, smooth strokes of the whetstone in his hand started to rouse an uncomfortable warmth in her core, she stood from the fire on the excuse of going to collect ridgewood. 

In short, the night was torture. 

Shortly after dawn, Aloy suggested that they set out, and Nil agreed. He’d initially wanted to leave Luka and Taran behind, but Aloy requested that they come along, as Taran’s perspective in particular might prove useful. 

Nil had raised one eyebrow quizzically, but ultimately he’d ordered them to follow, and they had heeded to his decision unquestioningly. 

Aloy frankly found this astounding. It wasn’t that she couldn’t imagine Nil as an authority figure; he was confident, strong, and self-assured, all necessary traits for a charismatic leader. But she was just so used to having him follow her that it was weird to see other people following _him._ And she still couldn't get over the fact that he willingly had two companions now. He'd always said he disliked everyone but her...

They arrived at the city via Meridian Village with the intent of taking the Great Elevator up to the palace, as the western bridge into the city was still under repair since the devastation of the war. As they reached the outer limits of the city, Nil turned to Luka and Taran.

“Go no farther than the Royal Maizelands. Aloy will send word if you’re needed,” he told them, and they both nodded before walking away. Then Nil turned to Aloy and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

Aloy closed her mouth; it had dropped open in disbelief. “They do exactly as you say, without question. It’s like…” She trailed off as they walked together towards the elevator, and she tried to formulate her thoughts. 

“Avad said you never finished officer training with the military. But it looks like you’re a natural,” she finally said as they stepped into the elevator. 

Nil yanked the elevator handle and turned to her with a casual shrug. “Maybe they just recognize an alpha male when they see one. _You’re_ the only one who’s never been cowed by my superior strength and combat skills.” He threw her a charming grin.

Aloy gave him a skeptical look and rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh.” Then she eyed him with unabashed curiosity. “I’d love to know more about how you met them. A female shaman and a Tenakth who _doesn’t_ want to kill everyone? That must quite a story.” 

Nil tilted his head as he returned her gaze. “Well, now that we’re in the same place again, maybe we’ll have time.” 

His hot silver eyes slid over her face and lingered on her lips, and for the millionth time in the last two days, Aloy had to remind herself to breathe. She folded her arms defensively and looked away from him, tongue-tied yet again as so many unsaid things rose between them. 

Even though their separation had been agonizing, Aloy believed from a purely logical perspective that it was for the best. Nil had stopped being satisfied with following her everywhere, and Aloy couldn’t bear the heavy responsibility of his happiness anymore. _There was no other option,_ she scolded herself firmly as she stared unseeingly at the golden grates of the elevator. _He seems just fine without me, and… I’m fine too._

They were both fine. Everything was fine. So why was she having such a hard time reminding herself of that?

After an interminable length of time, the elevator stuttered to a stop, and Aloy stepped out with great relief and made a beeline for the palace, with Nil close behind. 

_Very_ close behind, in fact. Aloy couldn’t help but notice that he’d fallen into following her the way he used to: a mere step behind her, his arm occasionally brushing against her back because he was so close. She swallowed hard and tried to ignore the familiar heat in her belly, the treacherous feeling of safety that his nearness gave her. She knew she should tell him to step back, but she seemed to have lost her voice. 

They made their way into the palace in silence, and one of the guards ushered them politely to the council room where the others were already waiting and chatting quietly. They all looked up as Aloy and Nil entered.

Avad was the first to speak. “Nil. Thank you for coming. I’m sure you must have come a long way to be here.”

Aloy took her usual place beside Vanasha, and Nil sauntered around to the position beside Aloy and opposite from Avad, looking totally at ease. “It was no trouble,” he replied politely, and Aloy experienced a jolt of surprise at this _normal_ response. 

Avad also raised his eyebrows in surprise, but otherwise he brought no attention to it. “Did Aloy tell you why we’re requesting your aid?”

Nil folded his arms and shook his head. “She just said she needed a favour. So here I am.”

Aloy’s ears felt hot at this, but she kept her expression neutral. Avad shot her a quick glance before speaking. “We have received word that the Tenakth are going to launch an attack on the Utaru. The Utaru have formally requested the aid of the Sundom, but before we decide whether to help or not, we would like to know what we’d be going up against.” Avad shifted slightly, then continued, “Aloy tells us that you lived with the Tenakth for some time, that you… understand the way they think, the way their society works. We would be most indebted to you if you would share with us what you know.” 

Nil shifted his weight and glanced at Aloy. Then he looked at Avad again and lowered his arms. “Yes.” 

There was a quiet murmur of satisfaction and relief around the table as everyone relaxed slightly. Nil folded his arms again. “What do you want to know?”

It was Uthid’s turn to speak. “Our primary concern is their military strategies and combat style. Our army is strong, but if we are to plan our maneuvers effectively-” 

“Who exactly is planning to attack the Utaru?” Nil interrupted. 

Marad, Uthid, and Avad looked at him questioningly. Nil waved one hand casually, and for the first time, Aloy actually _saw_ him as royalty; he seemed so comfortable in this room, and so in command of this audience. “Who’s the Tenakth band leader in charge of the attack? Is it one band, or are the bands rallying together?” Nil clarified. 

Avad raised his eyebrows and looked at Marad. For once, Marad seemed uncertain. “I… will fetch the Utaru messenger from Sunstone Rock at once. She can provide us with more information. I will make arrangements for her to be here tomorrow morning.” Avad nodded briskly to him, and he left the room swiftly. 

Aloy turned to Nil. “They don’t know anything about the Tenakth except the rumours,” she told him in a low voice. Aloy herself knew a bit more about the Tenakth from what Nil had told her in the past, but he needed to remember that nobody else in this room did. “They don’t know about the bands or the band leaders or any of that. You’re starting from scratch.”

Nil raised his eyebrows. Then, in a very low voice he said, “This is quite the favour you’re asking, Aloy. I might make you pay. In blood.” Then he grinned at her. 

Butterflies took flight in her stomach as her thoughts were forced to a time long ago, when she’d first taken him out to defeat the Stormbird. “I’d like to see you try,” she quipped without thinking, and she felt Nil’s answering chuckle in her chest as much as she heard it. 

She bit back a smirk as she leaned away from him, and immediately felt guilty as she met Avad’s anxious eyes. Then everyone’s attention returned to Nil as he pulled up one of the chairs that lined the sides of the room and sat down, looking right at home. “Shall we get started?” he drawled. 

The others looked to Avad for permission, and with the Sun-King’s nod, they all seated themselves around the table to hear what the Carja killer had to say.

************************

It was late afternoon by the time Avad and the council felt they had a good enough initial grasp of Tenakth culture to start planning for tomorrow’s conversation with the Utaru messenger. Aloy was impressed with how articulate Nil was in his description of the Tenakth. His account of their day-to-day life and the organization of their society was thoughtful and analytical, all couched in his usual heavy metaphor and gratuitous goriness, but somehow Nil’s grim poetry just made his descriptions more interesting. 

Finally Avad stood slowly from his seat. “Nil, _thank_ you. This has been… incredibly illuminating, in fact. You will join us to speak with the Utaru messenger tomorrow, I trust?” 

Nil nodded once as he stood, and Avad smiled. “Please stay in the palace tonight. We’ll need your expertise on hand as soon as the messenger arrives.”

But Nil shook his head. “The sounds of Meridian are as stifling as a pillow held to the face. I’ll make my own accommodations outside the village.”

Aloy felt a prickle of discomfort, which increased when a slight frown creased Avad’s face. “It's imperative for you to remain within reach. We may urgently need your counsel.” 

Nil shook his head again. “I’ll return to the palace early in the morning.”

“Nil, just stay in the damn city, all right? You’re needed here,” Aloy suddenly burst out. “Fire and spit,” she muttered under her breath. Why did he have to be so difficult? Then with a shock of embarrassment, she realized that everyone in the room was staring at her.

Including Nil. His silver eyes blazed with amusement and heat as they traced her face, and a hint of a smile was curling his lips. But he simply nodded his head slightly in acquiescence. “All right, Suntress. I’ll stay. But only because you asked so nicely.” 

Vanasha actually laughed at this, but Aloy barely noticed; a wave of unstoppable memory and emotion suddenly washed over her. _Suntress._ Her beloved nickname. She hadn’t heard her nickname in his voice in a year, and suddenly she was seized again by confusion and grief. She swallowed hard, then experienced a further jolt of dismay as she caught sight of Avad’s face. His eyes flicked sharply between her face and Nil’s, and Aloy realized with horror that Avad never knew about Nil’s special name for her.

Aloy stood from the table. She needed to get away from them all, be alone with her thoughts. “Avad, if you’ll excuse me?” she said politely. Avad looked at her and nodded acquiescence, but the sudden anxiety and confusion in his eyes made her chest ache even more. 

Vanasha swiftly squeezed her hand as she left the table. Aloy walked out of the office at a measured pace, but as soon as she was out of eyesight, she broke into a run. She ran out of the palace and through the market, then without stopping, she rappelled wildly off the bridge beside the Great Elevator. 

As soon as her feet touched the ground, she whistled for a Strider, slung herself on its back, and bolted through the jungle.

She just needed to run: away from Nil’s simmering gaze and his smooth, sarcastic voice and her _stupid_ nickname… and away from Avad’s innocent confusion. 

She just needed to _run_.

***************************

Late that night, Aloy was sitting cross-legged on her bed in her palace quarters. She felt considerably more calm after her run through the jungle, and she was using her Focus to pore through scanned copies of the scribe’s notes from their council meeting that afternoon. 

She was deeply engrossed in Nil’s description of Tenakth mating and family norms when she heard a soft knock on her door. Preoccupied, she stood from the bed and opened the door while flicking to the next digital page of notes. Then she turned to look at her visitor. 

Avad gently closed the door behind him and stepped into the violet web of light that surrounded Aloy when her Focus was on. She smiled at him and tapped her Focus off.

“I was going over the notes about the Tenakth. It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” she said brightly. “To learn so much about a tribe that we’ve only ever heard stories about. The situation is… dire, to say the least, but at least we can take this opportunity to discover more. I’m sure we’ll learn more about the Utaru too in the course of all this!” 

Avad smiled as he sat next to her on the bed. “That’s one of the things I love about you, Aloy. You can see the bright side of everything and everyone.” 

Aloy smiled at him, but felt a twinge of discomfort. She wasn’t sure she was going to like the direction of this conversation. Sure enough, Avad’s face was serious as he took her hands in his and sighed. “Aloy… I know you wish to eschew a deeper tie with me right now. And I understand. But... it would be disingenuous for me to continue as we have been without telling you how I feel.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Aloy, I-” 

But Aloy interrupted him. “Avad, think about this before you speak. Are you sure you aren’t just… feeling a certain way because Nil is here?”

Avad’s eyes widened in shock and dismay at her blunt analysis. He rubbed his face in agitation. “I will admit, his presence here… it makes me feel more… uncertain than I thought it would.” Avad looked at her frankly, and Aloy felt another pang of guilt at the yearning in his gaze. “It’s obvious that he still cares for you.” 

He was looking for reassurance, Aloy knew. Avad wanted her to tell him that he had nothing to worry about when it came to Nil.

But after today, deep in her heart, Aloy knew she couldn’t give him that. 

So she took a different tack instead. “Don’t you think these matters are trivial compared to the bigger problem at hand?” she reasoned. “This Tenakth threat doesn’t just affect the Carja indirectly. If the Utaru are conquered, their lands border yours. The Sundom could be next. I think the welfare of your people matters a little bit more than the feelings of a Sun-King and a Nora huntress, don’t you?” She gave him a little smile to soften the hard bottom line of her words. 

Again, Avad’s eyes widened, and he gave an incredulous little laugh. “Aloy… You really are a wonder. The wisdom of an elder in the body of a beautiful young woman.” He gave a huge sigh, then bowed his head to her. “Please, forgive me my foolishness. Can we enjoy the rest of the evening until the Sun graces us again with a new day’s responsibilities?”

Aloy smiled cheekily at him. “Of course, Your Radiance.” She stroked his hair fondly and gazed into his warm brown eyes before kissing him. 

But behind her closed eyelids, all she could see was silver.


	5. Human Quarry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil decides that he wants to win his Suntress back, and a happy coincidence gives him the opportunity to do just that.

Nil stood alone at the balustrade overlooking the valley of the Maizelands. At this hour of the night the market was deserted, and the peace and quiet afforded him some time to think. 

The primary thought in his mind was that he wanted Suntress back. He knew this now for sure. This conflict between the Tenakth and Utaru was serendipitous, as it gave him an opportunity to spend time with her. Now all he had to do was convince her that she should let him join her again. 

He just wanted to be near her again. He didn’t think that was too much to ask.

Nil clenched his fists, then folded his arms restlessly. What he really wanted was to go to her quarters. He knew she was staying in the east-facing side of the palace, as he'd seen her returning there earlier that evening. But something stopped him. Things weren’t as they were before, when he could always be confident of her welcome. 

Eventually Nil sat on a bench in one of the pagodas along the balustrade and fell asleep. He woke early the next morning when the first rays of sun struck his eyelids, and went straight to the palace. 

As he'd hoped he would, he found Suntress there, sitting alone in one of the casual seating areas with a cup in her hands. _Early riser as always,_ he thought with satisfaction as he sauntered over to her. “Good morning, Suntress. Did you watch the sun rising like a drop of blood in reverse?” 

Suntress looked up at him and the corners of her green-and-gold eyes tilted up in a smile, but to Nil’s surprise, she bit her lip and didn’t reply.

Nil raised one eyebrow. He’d expected some kind of colourful riposte. He sat beside her on the divan. “What, no morning greeting? You wound me,” he joked. 

Suntress looked at him with resignation on her face. “You shouldn’t call me that,” she said quietly, and Nil was genuinely confused for a moment until he realized what she meant: his nickname for her. 

He frowned. “Why not?” 

She swallowed visibly. “You know why,” she said, her voice even quieter than before. 

Nil tilted his head. Why shouldn’t he call her Suntress? He knew she liked it. She always had. “I don’t understand.” 

She gave him a look that was half-exasperation, half-fondness, and his heart skipped a painful beat at the familiarity of that look on her face. “It’s a special name, Nil. You can’t… call me that anymore.” 

Nil raised his eyebrows. “So you’d rather I call you a common name? Should I call you ‘girl’ from now on?” 

Her hazel eyes glittered with humour and she grinned suddenly. Nil grinned back, feeling a surge of triumph at having coaxed a smile from her. 

Then the moment was ruined as Vanasha wafted in. “Pet Prince! Aggravating our little huntress so early in the morning, are you?” she purred. 

Nil rose from the divan, his face falling into a blank mask. “Vanasha. Aggravating a Carja murderer so early in the morning? Probably unwise.” 

Vanasha grinned, her dark eyes sparkling with amusement. “Is that a threat? How fun!” she chirped, then sat next to Suntress, who was staring into her cup. Vanasha squeezed Suntress’s shoulder and raised her eyebrows, and Suntress gave Vanasha a quick smile and a nod before gulping the rest of her beverage and standing from the divan. She looked at Nil, and her face was businesslike. “Avad and the others will be here within the hour.” 

Nil shrugged affably. He didn’t care about the others as long as she was here. He watched her hungrily as she walked over to the balcony, then looked at Vanasha. “I don’t suppose _you_ would leave and return in an hour? Things were so peaceful without you.”

Vanasha gave a throaty laugh and leaned back on the divan. “Not a chance, Pet Prince. I’ll stay here and supervise, if you don’t mind.”

Nil tilted his head in confusion. What was she talking about? But Suntress suddenly whipped around and glared at her. “Vanasha,” she snapped.

Vanasha brushed some non-existent dust from her skirts and tilted a chiding look at Suntress, whose fists were clenched. Nil looked between them, certain that he was missing something, but if Vanasha was pissing Suntress off, that’s all he needed to know. 

He took a step closer to Suntress. “Shall I dispatch her for you? It would be my pleasure,” he drawled, only half-joking. 

“See?” Vanasha said pointedly to Suntress. “ _This_ is why I’m here. This will be a problem.” 

Nil looked back at Vanasha. He was starting to feel annoyed. What the fuck was she going on about? 

To his surprise, Suntress turned and glared at _him_ like he was the one doing something wrong. “Nil, you need to back off. Okay? I’m with Avad now.” 

Nil stared at her. Then suddenly he laughed. He couldn’t help it. “What?”

She blushed a rosy pink. “Avad and I are together. That’s why you can’t call me ‘Suntress’ anymore.”

Nil narrowed his eyes. This was preposterous. “Do you love him?” he demanded bluntly. 

Suntress blushed even harder until her cheeks were almost the colour of pomegranates. “ _Excuse_ me?” she hissed. 

“I said, do you love him?” Nil repeated flatly, and he watched with interest as she folded her arms defensively and spluttered. “I - that’s not - it’s none of your business!” she spat.

Nil smiled at her. That wasn’t a _yes_ , not by any stretch of the imagination. He reached out and tucked one of her precious braids behind her ear. “Good. Then I still have a fighting chance.” 

Her jaw dropped and her face went utterly white, and behind him, Vanasha offered her unsolicited opinion. “Oh shit.” 

“Morning!” A cheerful Oseram voice interrupted them all, and Nil turned to see Erend strolling over. Beside him, Suntress turned away to face out towards the balcony, and Nil could see her hands trembling as she gripped the railing. 

“Erend!” Vanasha called out loudly. “Perfect timing, as always. Have you seen the others?” 

Erend drifted over to talk to Vanasha and Nil turned towards Suntress, but before he could speak, she glared at him. “Do _not_ talk to me right now,” she hissed, and Nil recoiled from the venom in her tone. He held up one conciliatory hand and reluctantly joined Vanasha and Erend in the seating area. 

Vanasha shot him a dirty look as he sat down, but he ignored her and nodded politely to Erend, who nodded back cautiously. Erend glanced at Suntress and leaned towards Vanasha. “Is she okay?” he murmured. 

“She’s fine,” Vanasha said firmly, and gave Nil another filthy look. This time Nil stared back at her with all the disgust he could muster. As far as he was concerned, Suntress’s anger was _Vanasha’s_ fault. She’d been fine until Vanasha had appeared. 

At that moment, Avad arrived with Uthid in tow. He looked around at them all. “Excellent, we’re all here. Marad will be along in a moment with our guest. Please, let’s go to the council room.”

Suntress finally turned away from the balcony when Avad appeared, and her face was completely calm and relaxed. She nodded agreement to Avad’s suggestion and followed him to the council room without making eye contact with Nil or Vanasha. 

As they settled around the council room table, Marad appeared, ushering a young Utaru woman along with him. Courteously Marad settled her in a chair beside Nil, then returned to his customary spot at Avad’s right. “Your Radiance, this is Laea, our Utaru guest.” 

Avad half-bowed to the young woman. “Welcome, Laea. Please, share with us what you know of the Tenakth attack.” 

Laea nodded. “Thank you, Your Radiance. We first learned of the danger when a group of hunters didn’t return to Golden Maize. That’s our southmost village. Two days later, two of their bodies were found outside. The other two hunters - a man and a woman - were unaccounted for.

“A few days later, from what I understand, a Tenakth band came in force and killed most of the villagers. That's forty-two people in total. A few survivors managed to flee to a neighbouring village. They said that the Tenakth spared the lives of a few people - men, women, some children… We don’t know why.”

“Probably chosen to become mates or children of the Tenakth, if they were strong,” Nil interjected lazily. 

Laea looked at him in surprise. “What makes you think that?” 

Nil eyed her blankly. “I don’t think it. I know. I lived with them for a time.” He smirked faintly as she shirked away from him apprehensively. 

“Please, Laea, go on,” Suntress prompted, and the young woman nodded nervously. “In the past, the Tenakth would stop after raiding one village, at least until the resources were all depleted. Sometimes they would just go back to the Bloodlands and bother us no further. But after that first attack on Golden Maize, the Tenakth… kept moving north, and swiftly. They attacked Grasswood, then Plainheart, then Farmer’s Blessing. I live in Fertile Song, our northernmost village. At the time that our governor sent me to the Sundom, the Tenakth had stopped in Farmer’s Blessing, but… scouts were reporting that their numbers were increasing. More Tenakth were joining them from the south.” 

Nil shifted in his seat. “So they _are_ banding together. That’s exciting.” 

Suntress pinched the soft underside of his arm _hard_ , and he jerked away from her with an affronted look. “What he _means_ to say is, that’s a dangerous development,” Suntress interrupted. “How long ago was that?”

“Five days ago,” Laea answered. 

Nil looked at the Utaru girl. “Did your scouts hear any names? Anyone saying who the leader is?” 

Laea nodded. “I believe the name they heard was Merat. Or Marat?” 

Nil felt a jolt of disbelief, followed by a euphoric wave of vicious joy. He threw his head back and laughed, then pounded the table with his fist. “Merat. Are you certain?”

Laea, now looking positively terrified of him, swallowed hard before answering. “Not completely certain, but I think so.” 

“Nil…?” Suntress breathed, and he turned to look at her with a grin. She was staring at him, wide-eyed with disbelief, and he knew she was thinking of the story he’d told her of when he’d met his first Tenakth band… and of the leader that he’d almost killed.

Nil stood abruptly and leaned over the table, his palms flat on its surface as he looked directly at Avad. “I’m going to Plainsong. I’ll kill Merat with my own two hands. She won’t escape me this time.” He laughed again, feeling more excited than he had in months. 

Suntress stood and put a restraining hand on his arm, then turned to the rest of the council. “Nil knows this Tenakth leader,” she explained hastily. “She was the first band leader he ever met in the Bloodlands.” Then she turned to him for confirmation. “It was her band that you lived with during your time there?”

Nil nodded, and there was a general uproar of disbelief around the table at this coincidence. Nil didn’t care. He stared at Suntress, high on excitement. “I’m going to kill Merat. Come with me,” he urged. This was going to be a fantastic adventure, and he wanted to share it with her.

“We should try to negotiate first,” Suntress argued, and Nil smirked at her. “There is no negotiating with the Tenakth, Suntress. They don’t _talk_. They kill and they raid. Are you coming with me or not?”

Suntress turned helplessly to look at the others. “I… I know Nil says they won’t talk, but I think it’s worth a shot. Anything to try and avoid another war.” She ignored him as he shook his head in amusement at her naiveté. “I’ll go with Nil to try and negotiate. We can also assess the Utaru’s defenses and bring back information so the Carja military will know how to proceed.” 

Avad stared at them, his youthful face lined with anxiety. “Perhaps you should take some guards. Or Uthid should accompany you, as a military expert?” 

Nil snorted in disdain. “No. Uthid and your guards will slow us down. We’re faster just the two of us.” 

He watched Avad’s face harden, but then Suntress spoke in a gentle voice. “Avad, he’s right. We’ll get there faster if we go on our own. It’s already been five days since the Tenakth started banding together. There’s no time to waste.”

The Sun-King took a deep breath, his lips pressed together into a thin line. Then finally he nodded sharply. “Fine. Yes, this is a good plan. Thank you, Nil, Aloy. When will you set out?” 

“Tomorrow,” Suntress replied promptly. “We’ll use the rest of this day to prepare.” 

Avad sighed heavily and nodded again. “So be it. Everyone, thank you for your time. Aloy, may I have a word?”

Suntress nodded and joined Avad, and they walked away towards Avad’s pagoda. Nil didn’t mind. He was too happy to mind. Tomorrow he would have everything he wanted: a terrific human quarry to pursue, and his flame-haired Suntress by his side again. 

Vanasha stood from the table and stepped closer to him. “You must be so pleased with yourself,” she murmured to him with a sweet smile. “If you do anything to hurt her, I’ll kill you myself.”

Nil glanced at her dismissively. Why would this stupid woman think he would hurt Suntress? That’s the last thing he would ever do. “I’d like to see you try,” he drawled. 

“Don’t tempt me,” Vanasha growled, and Nil raised an amused eyebrow at how much she sounded like Suntress. Then with a twitch of her hips, she walked away. 

Nil smirked to himself. Vanasha might be obnoxious, but she was right: he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t pleased. 

After the slagpile of a year he’d had, suddenly everything was going so well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: HAHAHA GUYS this chapter turned into more of a soap opera than I originally intended. But sometimes characters just have a mind of their own?! Thoughts, anyone? :3


	6. History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil and Aloy prepare for their trip to Plainsong, but painful tensions rise between them again, and Aloy seeks comfort and advice from her best friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Small edits to Luka's backstory since the Frozen Wilds DLC was released in Nov 2017.

Aloy squeezed Avad’s hand reassuringly and jogged away from his pagoda. Avad had offered for Aloy to take some of the Vanguard with her, or to station guards along their route in case she needed backup. She'd eventually accepted the latter just to try and wipe some of the anxiety from his eyes. She was also violently grateful that he hadn't mentioned any personal concerns, though she could see the vulnerability in his eyes.

Vanasha stopped her as she strode towards Nil. “Aloy. I’m-”

“Save it, Vanasha,” Aloy snapped. “You've done enough. I could use a little less of your help.”

Vanasha gazed frankly at Aloy. “I'm just trying to look out for you. You can do better than _him_ ,” and she nodded disparagingly at Nil.

Aloy stared at Vanasha for a moment, breathless with amazement at her presumption. Most people had no idea that Nil had almost died to protect her from Helis. And _nobody_ understood what it had meant to her to have Nil by her side when she was searching for the answers that had haunted her and kept her isolated for so long. Even if she and Nil weren’t together anymore, none of that history had gone away. Despite his proclivity for killing, he was a far better man than _anyone_ gave him credit for. 

Aloy took a step closer to Vanasha. “You have _no idea_ what you are talking about,” she said in a low, dangerous voice. “You don't know Nil. And if you think you can tell me what's best, you don't know me.” She swept past Vanasha towards Nil.

His eyes were on her face already as she approached him, and he raised one quizzical eyebrow. Aloy shook her head silently and jerked her chin towards the bridge from the palace to the city proper, and silently they set out towards the market for resources.

Nil automatically fell into place just behind her, his broad shoulders looming at the corner of her eye, and Aloy couldn’t decide if she had a stronger urge to kiss him or kill him for hovering so close. She settled on ignoring him and mentally running through the list of things they needed for their journey. _Wire, obviously. Never have enough wire. Linen strips for bandages… dried fruit and meat… blaze and sparkers…_

Nil interrupted her thoughts as they stepped into the marketplace. “So, Suntress. We’ll be hunting _my_ kind of prey during this little adventure. Are you ready to savour that coppery perfume in the air as you drain the life from their veins?”

She spun towards him suddenly, and he was so close that he almost smacked into her. “Stop calling me ‘Suntress’!” she snapped. She was enjoying her favoured name on his lips, and it wasn’t _right._ “Just call me ‘Aloy’, all right?”

Nil rolled his eyes and groaned. “But it’s so much _work_ to remember not to say it. Calling you Suntress is natural and easy, like the delicious punch of an arrow through an eye. The name is both fitting and fair, like a well-earned kill. Why would you want to give that up?”

Aloy stared at him with exasperation. Then suddenly she gave a snort of laughter. It had been so long since she’d heard his idiosyncratic brand of speech, and suddenly she realized how much she’d missed his sick sense of humour. Avad was absolutely lovely, but he never made her laugh in the same way that Nil did. “You’re so disgusting,” she said before she could stop herself.

Nil’s silvery gaze shot to her face, and he favoured her with a slow, feral smile. Aloy shivered as a wave of heat surged from her throat down to the apex of her thighs, and she broke her gaze from his with a pang of guilt.

Then she recognized the figure of a slim Banuk woman looking at machine parts. “Luka!” she called out, and the young woman turned, her eyes widening as she caught sight of Nil and Aloy.

Aloy turned to Nil. “I want to talk with her, if she’s willing. I’ve never met a female shaman before,” she told Nil excitedly, her discomfort forgotten in the wake of new discovery.

Nil smirked faintly at her, and she felt a bittersweet lurch in her chest at the fondness in his eyes. “Go ahead,” he said, and Aloy trotted away from him with relief to speak to Luka.

Luka agreed to a drink with Aloy and Nil, so Aloy took them to the Hunter’s Lodge. Once they were settled at a table, Aloy began asking the Banuk huntress about herself.

Luka’s story turned out to be darker than Aloy had anticipated. As with most female Banuk wanderers, Luka was a machine hunter by training and trade, but she had been fascinated by the shamanic arts at a young age. Aloy had been partially correct in her assumption about Banuk women becoming shamans: most weraks didn’t care whether their shamans were men or women, but some weraks did… and unfortunately, Luka’s werak had been one of them. Luka’s twin brother and best friend was a shaman, and despite their werak’s strict rules against it, he had secretly taught Luka some of the occult Banuk arts.

Eventually an older shaman in Luka’s werak found out, and Luka’s brother was banished. While hunting three days later, Luka found her brother dead, killed by a Ravager.

Aloy’s eyebrows contracted in sympathy. “That’s terrible, Luka. I’m so sorry.”

Luka nodded acknowledgement. “Thank you. But I got my revenge.” She raised her black eyes to Aloy’s. “I killed the shaman who sold my brother out. That’s why I was banished from my werak.” She sipped her wine.

Aloy nodded respectfully. She understood a blood grudge as well as anyone, although she had yet to actually kill someone out of revenge.

“And how did you wind up travelling with _this_ one?” Aloy asked with a nod to Nil, who was sipping Scrappersap and idly watching the other hunters in the Lodge. Aloy gave Luka a wry half-smile in an attempt to lighten the mood.

But Aloy’s casualness seemed to have the opposite effect; Luka looked apprehensively at Nil as though concerned about his reaction. When he continued to ignore them, Luka hesitantly said, “I… found him on my way south from Ban-Ur. He was… in a snowbank. I thought he was dead at first.”

Aloy felt suddenly sick. She looked at Nil, who was now studiously avoiding her gaze as he raised his tumbler to his mouth. She looked back at Luka. “When was that?” she asked, unable to keep the slight tremble from her voice.

Luka’s eyes flashed between Nil and Aloy even more apprehensively as she answered. “Maybe… almost a year ago?”

 _He left me and went north and almost died?_ Aloy felt like she was going to vomit. Horror was rising in her throat, bitter and hot as bile. 

Abruptly Nil stood from the table and went to the bar. Aloy watched him walk away, then shakily she downed the remainder of her Scrappersap. As she lowered her tumbler, she found Luka looking at her with a faintly wistful look on her face.

“You’re Suntress, aren’t you?” Luka asked softly. “It’s your… moral code that he follows.”

Aloy swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes.”

Luka leaned back slightly and then gave a bitter little laugh, and then Aloy felt a jolt as she suddenly realized why Luka followed Nil. It wasn’t just his easy authority that had kept the Banuk woman tied to him.

Nil returned to the table with three tumblers of Scrappersap and placed them firmly on the table. “Drink,” he said flatly, then sat and downed his Scrappersap all in one.

Tentatively Aloy took her new tumbler and sipped from it, but Luka ignored the Scrappersap. She finished her wine quickly and then stood. “I’m leaving,” she said suddenly. She couldn’t look at either Aloy or Nil.

Nil looked up at her in mild surprise. “What?”

Luka shuffled her feet, but didn’t meet Nil’s eyes. “May I have your leave to go?” 

Nil frowned slightly, then nodded.

“Where will you go?” Aloy blurted, suddenly feeling a sympathetic ache in her chest for the quiet Banuk huntress.

Finally Luka looked at her, and the faint pain in Luka’s eyes squeezed Aloy’s chest. She gave another humourless laugh. “I don’t know.”

Aloy stood, suddenly aching with empathy for Luka. “Try going north of here, to the desert. Look for a Banuk shaman named Brin. He’s a… friend. I think he’d be willing to teach you about the machine songs, if you can find him, though he may be… far away now. He’s an outcast too.”

Luka gazed at her warily, then nodded. “Thank you, Aloy. I’ll think about it.” She turned towards the exit.

“Luka,” Nil suddenly said, and Luka turned back to him. The thread of hope in her face broke Aloy’s heart.

Nil inclined his head to her regally, and Aloy was again reminded that he was royalty. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

Luka swallowed hard, then nodded brusquely and exited the Lodge, leaving Aloy and Nil in an uneasy silence.

********************  
An undertone of tension contaminated the rest of the day. Nil was uncharacteristically quiet as he followed Aloy through the market and then down to the river to collect resources, and the cold quality of his silence put her teeth on edge with bitter memories of the months just before he’d left her.

On top of this, Aloy felt a wrenching distress and guilt that Nil had wandered so far north after their parting that he'd almost died. Although he was healthy and well now, she couldn't help but feel like she partly to blame that he had again been at death’s doorstep because of her. She wanted to apologize - for what exactly, she wasn't sure; technically she wasn't responsible for anything he'd done after leaving her - but she couldn't bring herself to speak to him when he was being so… frigid. 

By the time Aloy and Nil had collected everything they would need for tomorrow, she was desperate to get away from him. Finally she turned to him brusquely just outside the village. “Meet me at the base of the elevator in the morning after sunrise,” she said, and he nodded.

With relief, she turned away from him, but before she could take more than a step, he grabbed her arm. “Aloy.”

She felt a sharp kick to her heart at his use of her real name, even though she’d told him to use it. Reluctantly she turned back to face him.

He gazed down at her, a faint frown creasing his eyebrows as he searched her face without speaking. Aloy took a breath as a deeply unwelcome surge of longing swept over her. “What?” she said defensively. What did he want? Why wouldn’t he let her go?

He stared at her for a moment longer, then shook his head slightly and released her arm. “I don’t know.” The corner of his lips lifted in a melancholy half-smile.

She stared up at him in despair. For the second time that day she was seized with opposing urges, unsure whether she wanted to laugh or to cry hysterically. Roughly she rubbed her face, then ran her hands through her hair. “I’m going to the palace. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?” she said. She hoped Nil wouldn’t notice the tremor in her voice.

Nil nodded again, and Aloy ran off towards the elevator.

As she rode up the elevator to the palace, she tapped her foot compulsively, her fingers biting into the flesh of her folded arms. She felt _so_ uneasy, like there were ants crawling inside of her skin that she couldn’t expel. Nil’s sullen silence combined with his longing gaze and his playful smirk… The fact that he almost _died_ right after she’d sent him away… All of it was too much, a potent combination of pleasure and unbearable pain and _guilt_ that was nearly bringing her to her knees. Was this what it was going to be like to travel with him? How would she bear it?

The elevator opened and Aloy ran along the bridge towards the palace at a dead sprint. It was only late afternoon, so Aloy wasn’t sure where she was headed or what she wanted to do, except that she wanted to put as much space between herself and her ex-lover as she could.

At the end of the bridge, she spotted Erend talking to a couple of the palace guards, and she felt a twinge of relief. The guards walked away, and Erend turned towards the bridge and spotted her.

Aloy didn’t slow down in her run towards him. He smiled at her, then his face fell anxiously as he registered the turmoil that must have been obvious in her expression. “Aloy! What-”

She slammed the words from his chest with a full-body hug, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. She’d never been more relieved to see her best friend. Instantly Erend wrapped his arms around her and patted her back anxiously. “Hey, hey - what’s wrong?” he murmured.

Aloy couldn’t speak. She just shook her head, unable to release him lest he see her face and cause the volcano of feelings inside of her to rupture. Eventually Aloy allowed him to lead her back to her quarters.

Solicitously Erend ushered Aloy over to sit on the bed, then brought her a glass of water and sat beside her. “D’you want to tell me what’s going on? You’re starting to scare me,” Erend said.

Aloy gulped the glass of water, then finally managed to smile at him. “You’re going to laugh at me. It’s so stupid.” Now that Aloy was back in her room with Erend’s pale face staring at her like someone had died, she was starting to feel pretty stupid indeed.

“Try me,” Erend insisted.

Aloy sighed gustily, then raised one eyebrow at him. “Boy problems,” she said succinctly.

“Ah.” Erend ran a hand over his mohawk. “Not something I can really help you with.” He smiled ruefully at her.

Aloy laughed, already feeling better just from his sweet, friendly presence. Suddenly feeling exhausted, she fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling as she spoke to Erend. “I don’t get it. Throw me a corrupted Thunderjaw and a handful of corrupted Watchers, no problem. Stormbirds and Stalkers? Easy. A camp full of bandits? I barely even break a sweat. But when Nil and Avad are in the same room… and then Vanasha is being so _interfering_...” She heaved a huge sigh as a fresh wave of tension gripped her shoulders and her skull.

Erend had slid down to sit on the floor with his back against the bed. “I _thought_ something had happened this morning,” he said worriedly. “You seemed weird. And Vanasha and Nil looked ready to kill each other…”

Aloy groaned and rolled onto her side as she remembered Nil’s words from that morning. _Good. I still have a fighting chance._ It was hard enough for her to be around him when he was just standing around being his charming, bloodthirsty self. How was she supposed to function normally now that she knew his intentions?

“This journey to Plainsong is going to be torture,” she whined. She knew she was being childishly self-indulgent, that Sylens would have lambasted her if he was still around, and that there were _way_ bigger problems in the world right now - like the Tenakth threat, for All-Mother’s sake! - but Aloy wanted to wallow in her own self-pity for one damn minute, thank you very much.

Erend chuckled and patted her foot comfortingly. “Hey, you survived over a year with him. You can survive a few more weeks.”

Aloy sighed again, and she and Erend were quiet for a few moments. Then Erend spoke again. “I can imagine it’s… hard to be around Nil. For you, I mean. When you guys were together, the whole Sundom could see how crazy you were for each other. That’s… hard to erase. Even if you’re with Avad now.”

A treacherous tear suddenly escaped Aloy’s eye, and she wiped it away surreptitiously so Erend wouldn’t notice. They were quiet again for a long time.

“Erend, what should I do?” Aloy whispered.

“About what?” Erend asked gently.

Aloy shrugged. “All of it. Both of… them.”

Erend chuckled again, but this time he sounded sad. “I dunno, girl. What do I know about any of this stuff?” He patted her foot again in a _there-there_ kind of way. “Only you can decide what’s best. You’ll figure it out. You figure everything out eventually.”

Finally Aloy began to relax. It was so nice to just have a sympathetic ear. She slid down to the floor to hug Erend again. “Thank you, Erend,” she said sincerely.

He patted her gruffly on the back. “Hey, no sweat. I hardly did anything anyway.”

 _Always underestimating himself,_ Aloy thought fondly. He never seemed to realize how grounding his down-to-earth, easygoing attitude could be.

At that moment, there was a knock on the door, and Aloy instantly knew who it was. She and Erend got to their feet and Aloy opened the door.

Avad stood there, a small smile on his lips but his forehead creased with worry. He nodded a friendly greeting to Erend, then turned to Aloy. “May I have a moment of your time?”

“Of course,” Aloy said. Erend slipped out with a quick wave to them both, and Aloy closed the door as Avad stepped into her quarters.

Avad turned to her and folded his hands regally. “I’ve arranged for guards to travel along the same route you and Nil will be taking to Plainsong. Most of them have left already. Once you leave, there should be two guards within a five-minute run no matter where you find yourselves. Is this acceptable?”

Aloy nodded. Then Avad seemed to wilt slightly as sadness washed over his face. “Aloy…”

Her stomach flip-flopped uncomfortably, but she faced him openly. She owed him this conversation. She’d prevaricated her way out of it yesterday, but Avad deserved better.

Tensely he took off his crown and ran a hand over his hair, reminding her most unhelpfully of Nil when he was agitated. “I know this is most… unbecoming of me as the ruler of the Sundom to keep harping at you about… issues I know you feel to be of little consequence. But I must speak frankly. You know that I feel very deeply for you. I understand that you need to be free to go where you must, and it is not my wish to stop you. But… please. If there is still something between you and Nil, _please_ , tell me now.”

Aloy took a deep breath. He deserved the truth. “Nil’s presence in Meridian has been difficult for me,” she admitted bluntly. “More difficult than I thought it would be. And I think that travelling together will be difficult for both of us – Nil and I. There's too much history for it not to be.” 

The corners of Avad’s eyes tightened with sadness, and Aloy’s chest ached for him. She stepped close and cupped his face in her hands. “There was a good reason that we separated,” she told Avad firmly. She really did believe that. Really, she did. “I just… think I need some more time, Avad. If you can stand to be patient with me for a little longer.”

After all, Vanasha had said Aloy just needed more time. But that sneaky little voice in her mind piped up. _After what Vanasha said this morning, do you still trust her judgment in this?_

Aloy shoved the voice away again. It was too late to consider that. Avad was already sighing and nodding acquiescence with Aloy’s request. On impulse, she wrapped her arms around him tightly and pressed her face to his neck as he returned her embrace. He deserved so much better.

“Remember, you’re the Sun-King,” she whispered to him playfully. “You have more important things to think about than one Nora huntress.”

Avad slowly pulled away, then traced her cheek with his thumb. His face was still sad. “You’ve never been just a Nora huntress,” he told her gently.

Aloy gazed back into his brown eyes without speaking. After all, what could she say to that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things: 
> 
> 1\. Did anyone else find that Banuk shaman Brin during the game?? OMG WHAAAT HE WAS SO CRAZY. And also WHERE DID HE GO THO?? DLC, maybe??  
> 2\. I told you guys, I love Erend. He's the best friend ever. I don't really ship it, but if anyone has a good Erend/Aloy fic recommendation, I'm totally open to reading!!  
> 


	7. Happier Without You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil and Aloy set out on their journey towards Plainsong, giving them some precious time alone.

Nil watched with frustration as Suntress ran away from him towards the Great Elevator. Why couldn’t he think of anything to say?

He couldn’t believe that it was possible to be so happy this morning, and then to feel like such utter shit this afternoon. For a brief, shining moment, Nil had felt like everything was in hand. Then Luka had mentioned how she’d found him half-dead in the ice, and suddenly he was furious. 

Nil was still surprised by how quickly the anger had risen. And he hadn’t been entirely sure _why_ he was so angry. At first he’d thought he was mad at Luka, but that didn’t make sense. He had no reason to be mad at Luka. He was rather surprised when he finally figured out that he was angry at Suntress.

He wasn’t angry at her about getting caught in the snow. That was his fault; he’d gone out unprepared. No, he was angry that Suntress had sent him away in the first place. 

This anger was a new and unwelcome discovery for Nil. He hadn’t been angry a year ago when she’d first sent him away. At that time, he’d felt like a Trampler had caved his chest in. And then as the weeks wore on, eventually he’d felt only numb. But at that moment in the Hunter’s Lodge today, he was… simply furious. 

And the anger had remained as he continued to follow Suntress for the rest of the afternoon, poisoning every step they took together and reminding him horribly of the time just before she’d banished him. Nil wanted it to go away, wanted to enjoy his time with her, but it seemed he had no choice about the inconvenient feelings he was suffering. 

Just like he had no choice about still being in love with her. 

When she turned away from him at the elevator, with her face so _hard_ and cold, Nil was beset by a surge of desperation to not let her slip away again, not _again_. And then as she stared up at him with those beautiful green-and-gold eyes, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

Not a single fucking thing.

***************

The next morning, Nil waited for Suntress at the base of the Great Elevator, and also for Taran. He’d sent a messenger to track down the Tenakth warrior. Suntress hadn’t needed him yet, but she might still. 

Suntress and Taran appeared around the same time, and Nil nodded to her first. “Sun- Aloy.” _Fire and blood, this is going to be a pain in the ass to remember,_ he thought with aggravation. Then he turned to Taran. “Wait here for us. Aloy may still need you on our return.” 

Taran nodded and turned to go, but Suntress held up a hand to stop him. “Taran, while you’re waiting, I don’t know if… maybe you’re looking for something to do? But the work crews at the western ridge of Meridian are always searching for able-bodied workers in rebuilding the bridge. The pay is very fair. If you’re interested, tell them I sent you.” 

Taran stared at her in surprise. “You… think they would accept me?” 

Suntress nodded. “Just tell them I sent you,” she repeated. 

Taran looked to Nil for confirmation, and Nil nodded once. “Do as she says.”

Taran nodded, then smiled hesitantly at Suntress. “Aloy… thank you.” 

She smiled at Taran, then together she and Nil headed southwest towards Plainsong. 

To Nil’s relief, Suntress seemed in a better mood this morning. She smiled at him as they walked along the path through the village towards the jungle. “Have you eaten?” she asked. 

Nil relaxed. “No,” he said. His anger from yesterday had finally dissolved after a night’s restless sleep, and she was acting so _normal_ that he couldn’t help but feel optimistic. 

Suntress pulled out a wax-cloth of dried apricots from one of her pouches and offered them to him. He took one, then raised an eyebrow at her. “I thought figs were your favourite.”

She smiled cheekily at him. “They are. I just thought I’d change things up a little.” 

Nil shrugged acknowledgement, and for a while they walked at a leisurely pace eating apricots in comfortable silence.

Eventually Suntress sipped some water from the Oseram flask Petra had given her and offered it to Nil. He accepted and took a large gulp, then handed the flask back to her. “How is Petra?” he asked.

Suntress looked at him in surprise. She looked frankly shocked, in fact. He wondered why; he thought it was a fairly normal question to ask. “She’s… well,” Suntress said finally. “Why do you ask?” 

Nil shrugged. “She’s your friend. I thought it was polite.”

“Yes, it is,” Suntress said, still staring at him. He raised an eyebrow at her. What was the big deal? Finally she just shook her head slightly, then took her flask back from him and took another drink of water.

“So tell me about Taran,” she said as she put her flask away, and Nil smiled faintly as a wave of affection washed over him. His Suntress, always with her incessant questions. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to him,” she continued. “What’s his story?”

Nil explained about Taran’s un-Tenakth-like distaste for raids and his strange desire to build a life instead of taking it by force. Suntress smiled brightly at the end of his story. “So _that’s_ why he seemed so pleased about helping with the bridge! I thought he seemed unusually… agreeable, given what you’ve told us about the Tenakth.”

Nil nodded in resignation. “He’s a decent fighter, but a poor Tenakth otherwise. I very nearly slit his throat. I’m not the only one who owes his life to Luka.” 

Suntress eyed him speculatively as he said this, and they walked quietly along the path out of the village for some time.

“Did you enjoy travelling with them? With Luka and Taran?” Suntress asked suddenly. 

Nil shook his head. “No.” The only person whose company he ever really enjoyed was hers. 

But Suntress continued to press in that endearing way of hers. “But you didn’t _mind_ travelling with them. Or else you would have left them behind long ago, wouldn’t you?” 

Nil thought about this for a moment. He hadn’t particularly _liked_ Luka and Taran’s company, but he hadn’t hated it either, not like he used to hate being around the courtiers in the palace when he was younger. Finally he shrugged. “I suppose I didn’t mind, no.” 

“If you didn’t mind either way, why did you let them stay instead of sending them away?”

Nil grinned down at her curious face. “You’re awfully interested in my crew, Suntress. _Aloy,_ ” he amended hastily, when she shot him a frown. Then he smiled cockily at her. “Jealous, are you?”

She scoffed. “Hardly. I’m just… curious. You never wanted to travel with anyone before. Except me, I know,” she added in exasperation as he opened his mouth. “So why them?” 

Again, Nil had to think about it for a while. He genuinely hadn’t cared either way about Luka and Taran when they’d first started travelling with him. He’d been too numb to care. But he supposed they were… easy to be around. He never had to pretend to be sociable around them. They never got in his way, and if they were bothered by his love for killing, they never showed it. 

Finally Nil shrugged again. “I guess _you_ would call them friends, Suntress.” 

A few moments later, he realized that she was gazing up at him with a complicated look on her face, almost like she was both happy and sad at the same time. He quirked one eyebrow at her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

She shrugged and looked away with a little smile. “No reason, really. That's… it’s interesting, that's all.” She fell into a thoughtful silence as they reached the edge of the jungle. 

Suntress whistled, and a galloping sound about sixty paces away heralded the arrival of two Striders. She turned to him with a teasing smile as she patted one Strider’s flank. “Still remember how to ride, Carja?” 

Nil smirked back at her and mounted the Strider with arrogant grace. “Please. It's as natural to me as sliding a blade into a heart. In fact, I would say I missed riding more than I missed you,” he teased. 

She snorted a laugh as she hopped onto her Strider, lifting Nil’s spirits further. Then she threw him a mischievous grin that made his heart skip a breathless beat. “All right then, I'll race you. First one to the Alight wins!” Then she kicked her Strider’s sides and took off. 

Nil grinned and followed in her wake, savouring the dual exhilaration of the ride and the sight of her, just ahead of him, her hair flying in the wind like playful flames. He leaned low on the Strider and kicked its sides again to go faster. 

As always, Suntress beat him by a mere few seconds, and she reared her Strider back with a celebratory little kick of its forelegs. Nil smirked at her as he pulled his Strider to a stop. “Hardly a fair race, is it?” he said. “I'm out of practice.”

“Oh come on, I know you love a challenge. It's not a victory for you if it's not hard-won,” she retorted with a confident toss of her head. She beamed at him, and Nil grinned back through a sudden wave of desire. He wanted her back _so badly_. He had to forcefully remind himself that it would not be appropriate to pull her off her Strider and kiss her. 

They turned their Striders towards the south and kicked them into a smart gait. “You seem happy,” Nil remarked. Indeed, she looked more relaxed, more like herself than she had all week. “I think you're excited for the hunt. You've been missing that sweet anticipation before the stalk, the spice of fear on your tongue before blood hits the ground. Haven't you?” 

Suntress threw him a chiding look, but she was smiling. “Still not my thing, Nil. But… I do feel good. It's nice to get away from the palace. I start to feel… itchy when I'm there for too long. It's hard to explain.” 

This pleased Nil. Avad was inexorably tied to Meridian, but Suntress was a wanderer at heart. The Sun-King could never tie down her Stormbird’s heart.

“I do like being at the palace,” Suntress said suddenly, and Nil turned to look at her. He was even more pleased to note that she looked slightly defensive. “I’m needed there, and I’m happy to be of help. But I… This Tenakth threat is important. To try and fix a problem that no one has tried to fix before. That’s where I really need to be.” 

She trailed off and dropped her eyes as though she’d said too much, but Nil understood her. “Adventure and discovery pound through your veins as surely as blood,” he said.

Her shoulders relaxed visibly at this, but she still didn’t look at him. “It’s not just that.”

“I know,” Nil replied easily. He shot her a playful smirk. “Your strange urge to seek the answers that will make a difference in the world. A vast and impossible task like trying to negotiate with a murderous tribe is certainly more fitting for Elisabet Sobeck’s progeny than bringing machine parts to the little people of Free Heap. I know you, Suntress. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

He removed his golden flask from his belt and took a little sip of Scrappersap, then turned to offer her the flask, but she wasn’t beside him. Confused, Nil looked back. 

She had stopped her Strider. Her eyes were closed and her face, which was turned away from him, was partly obscured by one hand covering her mouth. Nil frowned in concern. She looked… distressed? “Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head slightly but didn’t speak, her eyes still closed. Nil turned his Strider around and returned to her side. “Aloy?” 

She opened her eyes and looked at him, and he was dismayed to see them brimming with tears. Why was he always making her cry without meaning to? Unsure what to say, he watched her with trepidation, hoping she’d tell him what he’d done wrong so he could fix it. 

She briskly wiped her eyes then continued to gaze at him silently for a long time. Then finally she spoke. “You remembered. What I told you about… Elisabet. You remembered that?” 

Nil raised an eyebrow. “Yes.” Of course he remembered. They’d spoken about Elisabet Sobeck and Zero Dawn at length. He didn’t understand all of it - or most of it, really - but he understood Suntress’s connection to the dead woman. 

Suntress swallowed hard and ran her fingers through her hair. Then finally she smiled. “A vast and impossible task, you say? That sounds like a challenge.” 

Nil grinned slowly at her. “It is. Many say that Merat is a fearsome warrior. And if negotiations don’t work out, well…” He unsheathed his knife and ran his finger along its edge lovingly. 

Suntress shook her head in exasperation. “We _have_ to try to negotiate. Killing her is our last resort.”

Nil gave a dramatic sigh and sheathed his knife. “It really should be our first resort. But I suppose I’ll follow your lead.” He had little to no faith that negotiations would work out.

But if anyone would forge some kind of truce with the Tenakth, it was Suntress.

********************  
The following few days of travel to Plainsong passed by very pleasantly. Nil and Suntress rode southwest in comfortable silence interspersed with conversation. They stopped on occasion to take out small groups of bandits, and for Nil, this was like coming home: the deaths he and Suntress orchestrated were seamless, her sniping and his slashing coming together in a perfect symphony of blood and glassy, lifeless eyes. 

The nights were the only unpleasant times for Nil. Suntress always settled on the opposite side of the fire from him, and he didn’t dare move closer to her for fear that she would reject him. Each night, he watched her settle down on her side by the fire, and watched her face as she drifted off to sleep. Nil always used to savour the desire that Suntress fostered in him, but on these nights, separated from her by the vast distance of a single fire, the twin ropes of love and lust that she had tied around his heart squeezed so tightly that they were painful. 

They were due to arrive at Laea’s village, Fertile Song, on their third day of travel. That morning before setting out, Nil chewed on some dried boar meat as he watched Suntress sharpen her spearhead. 

Suddenly he remembered the glowing blue lance she’d used to defeat HADES. Why didn't she have it anymore? He tilted his head to the side curiously. “Suntress, whatever happened with that GAIA... entity? I still think it’s strange that you ran around the Sundom and the Sacred Lands doing petty favours when that problem remained unresolved.” 

She turned to look at him with an unguarded look of astonishment on her face. Nil raised one eyebrow; sometimes her facial expressions were so transparent. “What, you think I just sat there staring at you like an empty corpse while you talked about all this?” he drawled. 

She grinned at his macabre sarcasm, but her eyes were still wide with surprise. “No, of course not. I just…” She swallowed hard, then sat down beside him, giving him a jolt of hopeful pleasure in his chest. Then she began talking, her speech rapid and her voice passionate, as though her words were being released from a floodgate. “After you… I mean, when I was on my own, I went back to GAIA Prime. I tried to learn more about how to bring GAIA back. But the sheer damage… Nil, there’s so much that needs to be rebuilt. And I just don’t know how to rebuild it. Sylens said the Cauldrons could make what we need, but I need to learn how to - how do I explain this… how to get the instructions into them. And without Sylens…” She sighed heavily. “As selfish as he was, he was the only person who knew more than me about how the ancient ones’ technology worked. And now that he’s disappeared…” 

She fell silent for a moment as she stared at the ashes of the previous night’s fire, and Nil gazed longingly at her pensive frown, the slight pout of her fine lips. Then she turned to look at him, her face determined and worried at the same time. “Things are fine right now, but without GAIA, the Zero Dawn technology is still unstable. Even without HADES influencing the other subfunctions, the Derangement could happen again. It would take years, but that instability could return.” 

Nil forced himself to listen carefully to her, even though her nearness was scrambling his brain. She was so close he could feel the warmth of her skin. He could count the freckles across her cheeks and smell the achingly familiar scent of winterfresh on her breath. He swallowed hard to force down the yearning in his throat as she continued talking. 

“I think I need to go back to each of the Old Ones’ ruins. Look around more carefully, scan all the ancient devices again. There _has_ to be more that I can learn…” 

“I’ll come with you,” Nil said. He sipped some water from her Oseram flask and watched as she went completely still. 

She glanced at him hesitantly out of the corner of her eye. Maybe she hadn’t heard him properly. Gently he turned her face towards his and stared into the warm green-and-gold of her eyes. “I’ll come with you anywhere,” he told her seriously. 

Abruptly she stood and began racking her weapons on her back. “You can’t,” she snapped. “That didn’t work out before. It wouldn’t work out now. You can’t just… follow me.” 

“Why not?” Nil demanded as he got to his feet. His anger from the Hunter’s Lodge was starting to simmer again at the hardness in her tone. 

She whirled to face him, and the forbidding scowl on her face only served to cement his determination. He stepped towards her and took hold of her arm. “I never should have left. When you told me to leave, I crawled away like a coward. I should have stayed with you.” 

Suntress pulled her arm from his grip and folded her arms defensively. “No, Nil, it was good that you left. It was the right thing at the time.” She took a step back and cocked her head, her arms still folded angrily. “Didn’t you feel happier after you left? Didn’t you feel free?” 

_Happier?_ Was she insane? Without quite meaning to, Nil laughed. “I wasn’t _happier_. I was… empty. Even the hot spurt of blood from a freshly severed vein didn’t satisfy me.” 

“But you felt free. Didn’t you? You could do whatever you felt like. You weren’t stuck doing what I wanted to do.” 

Nil hated the bitter tone of her voice. He hated even more that she was right. “Maybe I wanted some freedom,” he admitted. After all, he’d promised her he’d never lie to her. “But I didn’t want to be free of _you_.” 

And there lay the crux of his anger at her. Nil wanted a choice. He didn’t want to be unequivocally banished, set aside completely like everything they had together was of no consequence. He _knew_ Suntress still loved him. She was the only person he’d ever been able to read, and he knew that she still wanted him. So why wouldn’t she give him another chance? He glared at her, breathing hard as his simmering anger burst into boil. 

“After that time when I was stuck at fucking Free Heap, you said you never wanted to be separated from me again. And then just one year later, a mere blink of an eye, you sent me away. Was that a lie, then, when you said you wanted me forever?” he demanded.

“No!” Suntress yelled, and a tear rolled down her face. “I meant it! I still… But things change, Nil! _You_ changed. You think you didn’t, but you did. You broke your promise! You said you’d be happy to follow me everywhere. But you stopped doing that! And then you became such an…” She broke off, her chest heaving with emotion, and roughly wiped the tears from her face. Then she shoved her hair back from her face and glared at him. “You were miserable, Nil. I could see it every damn day. And you were making _me_ miserable. There was no other choice.” 

Nil glared back at her, but a sudden stab of remorse speared his heart. He hadn’t known his boredom had been that obvious, or that he’d been making her miserable. 

_Fuck,_ Nil thought to himself with dismay. _Vanasha was right._ Without meaning to, Nil had hurt Suntress. 

But she’d hurt him too. She'd left a wound that always caught beneath his ribs. She was stubborn, uncompromising, spreading herself thin with all the errands that people were demanding of her, being sharp with him when he just wanted… her. A little bit more of _her_. 

Nil took a step closer to her. “I can’t believe _you_ weren’t able to think of some other solution than to send me away. The woman who brings Deathbringers to their metal knees and lures the Nora out of the Sacred Lands to battle, unable to think of anything more original than tossing me aside like a looted corpse?” 

Suntress gave a sudden sob, and Nil felt another sharp stab of remorse at upsetting her. But he needed to say this. He hadn’t said anything before, and he regretted it now. He took a step closer to her and cupped her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. 

“Are you happier without me? Tell me the truth,” he commanded. “Because I’m not happier without you. The past three days with you have been better than slitting Helis’s throat a thousand times over.” 

She sobbed again, but this time it was mixed with a laugh. “That’s really creepy, Nil,” she sniffled. 

He wiped her tears with his thumb. “Tell me you’re happier without me. I dare you to say it and _mean_ it.” 

She swallowed hard, then gently pushed his hands away from her face. “I don’t know, okay?” she said shakily. “I don’t… I don’t know what to tell you.” She wiped her face again, then faced him steadily. “I need to think. And… we need to get moving. We should arrive in Fertile Song this afternoon.”

 _Fuck Fertile Song,_ Nil thought mulishly, but he nodded reluctant agreement with her plan. If travelling would give her time to think, he could give that to her. 

He would give her his whole heart if she would accept it. What was a little more time?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes. The drama...
> 
> Are you guys still with me?


	8. A Shallow Reach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy and Nil finally reach Plainsong, and start assessing the Utaru's defenses. That night, they settle for the night in Plainsong's capital town, and Nil's thoughts surprise Aloy yet again.
> 
> A/N: Lots of plot! But also, more Niloy introspection. :)

Aloy savoured the fresh morning wind whipping through her hair as she rode her Strider hard towards Fertile Song. Now if only the wind could whip the confused tangle of emotions from her mind. 

A big part of the tangle was sheer relief. It was just so _nice_ to be able to talk to someone about GAIA, and about her disappointment at not being able to restore Elisabet’s work to its intended glory. Aloy felt like she’d been holding her frustration inside for months. When Nil asked her about it, she felt an almost instantaneous catharsis at just being able to _talk_ about it with someone who knew the whole story. Nil had always been an excellent listener, even if he made cheeky jokes and didn’t really understand the ancient ones’ technology. 

Unfortunately, talking about GAIA - and Nil’s comment about Aloy’s connection to Elisabet - only served to remind her painfully that nobody understood her like Nil did. 

_I know you, Suntress. You don’t have to explain yourself to me._ His words repeated themselves over and over in her head, and she knew them to be true. With just a few short sentences, Aloy felt like he’d described her almost perfectly. 

This only made it harder to bear the next words he’d thrown at her. _You were unable to think of anything more original than just tossing me aside like a looted corpse?_

These were the words that kept clanging in her brain like a broken gong, that really punched the breath from her lungs. Was that really what he thought she’d done - just discarded him like a pile of scrap that she didn’t need anymore? Did he really think her decision had been that callous?

Aloy hadn’t realized he was so angry about their separation. To be fair, she’d been too busy suffering from Nil’s loss to think about whether he was suffering too. But the degree of his anger dismayed her.

The worst part was Nil’s implication that she’d had a choice. Back during those last tumultuous months together, they’d both been so miserable that Aloy had thought there was no choice but to irrevocably break their ties with each other. After Nil had left her side, she’d continued to tell herself that there was no choice in order to try and erase her pain with cold logic. 

But now, he’d implied that there could have been some other solution. Something less final. Some kind of compromise, perhaps.

This was the worst thing of all: thinking that all of this anguish could have been avoided. That maybe she had made a mistake in letting Nil go. 

****************************

Later that afternoon, Aloy spotted the first handpainted boulders indicating that Fertile Song was nearby. She glanced at Nil, who nodded back silently, and together they dismounted their Striders and made the rest of their way to the village on foot. As always, Nil loomed just behind her, and Aloy didn’t bother lying to herself anymore about enjoying the comforting familiarity of his muscular heat at her side. 

As promised, Avad had sent soldiers ahead, so the residents of Fertile Song were already awaiting Aloy and Nil’s arrival as they walked up the path to the village. 

Aloy’s residual angst about that morning’s argument dissolved as she took in her first view of Fertile Song. The Utaru village was _fascinating._ It was dominated by eight relatively long one-storey buildings. _Probably residential buildings,_ she thought. They were sturdily built of wood, and each building - Aloy’s eyes widened at this - had a garden on top of its roof, rich with vegetables and fruits. There were also three smaller square-shaped buildings with plain metal roofs, which villagers entered and exited with baskets of food and grain. _Storehouses, probably?_ she wondered with avid curiosity. Behind the village, lush crops, divided into three large sections, stretched out for at least a kilometre. Aloy watched in fascination as the villagers tended the crops. She'd never seen this type of large-scale agriculture before.

Aloy finally tore her eyes away from the village to examine the three Utaru that had come to meet her and Nil. One of the Utaru, a middle-aged woman with midnight-black hair and almond-shaped brown eyes, stepped forward and smiled tentatively at Aloy. “The Sun-King’s guards spoke of a red-haired Nora advisor who would be coming to meet us. You must be Aloy.” 

Aloy nodded. “I am.” She then gestured to Nil. “This is Nil. He’s also an advisor to the Sun-King, and something of an expert on the Tenakth.” 

The dark-haired woman’s smile slipped slightly as she looked at Nil, and Aloy remembered with a jolt that Nil had attacked some Utaru settlements during the Red Raids. She wanted to smack herself for forgetting to ask him which ones. 

But before Aloy say anything to smooth over the sticky moment, Nil inclined his head slightly to the woman. “Some of your people will recognize me from the Red Raids. I… apologize if that makes anyone uncomfortable.” 

With a huge effort of will, Aloy managed not to gape at him in astonishment. _He’s being so polite,_ she thought incredulously. Several times now since he'd returned to Meridian, he'd surprised her with his strangely appropriate questions and behaviours. She wondered if this new appropriateness was a conscious effort on his part. 

Aloy kept tight control of her face and gazed steadily at the dark-haired woman. Finally the woman nodded cautiously but politely to Nil. “Thank you for your apology,” she said softly, and then she gave them both a sincere smile. “My name is Dara. I’m the head of Fertile Song.” She introduced her two companions: a man a few years older than Nil whose name was Sal, and a woman around Nil’s age named Daneet. “Sal and Daneet are our lead hunters,” Sal explained.

“Machine hunters?” Aloy asked curiously. 

Sal smiled, and Daneet shook her head. “No, game hunters. We provide meat for the village.” 

Beside her, Nil gave a very quiet snort of disdain, and Aloy ignored him, even as she felt a thread of fond amusement. Nothing less than human hunting would ever impress him. 

“We’re glad you’re here,” Dara said. “The Sun-King’s guards told us that you’re both formidable warriors, and that you have extensive experience with foes of both metal and flesh alike.” 

Aloy nodded confirmation; there was no need for false modesty here. “Your village is our first stop, but we need to continue south. We need to learn more about the nature of the Tenakth threat, and about any defenses that you have. Are the Tenakth still massing at Farmer’s Blessing?”

Dara’s eyebrows drew together with anxiety. “Yes. The last I heard, their numbers were growing steadily. There were over eighty Tenakth warriors there at last count, but that number is perhaps two days old now.” 

Aloy looked at Nil to interpret this, and a chill ran down her back: his eyebrows were raised with surprise. _That can’t be good,_ she thought worriedly. Indeed, Nil confirmed this with his response. “That means 6 to 8 bands have come together. They’re moving quickly.” 

Aloy turned back to Dara, Sal and Daneet with a concerned frown. “We won’t stay long. We need to keep moving south. But can you tell us what kinds of defenses you have? How do you usually protect yourselves against the Tenakth?”

Dara turned to look at Sal and Daneet, and Daneet replied. “That’s why we wanted to speak to you. We aren’t accustomed to… human targets. We were hoping you could advise us in… that type of defense.”

Aloy frowned more deeply. “What are you saying? You don’t… know how to defend yourselves from attackers?”

“They’re simple game hunters, Suntress,” Nil interjected. He sounded very neutral, but Aloy knew him well enough to detect a thread of condescension in his voice. “They aren’t accustomed to our type of prey. They’re like children. They need coaching in the spilling of human blood.” 

Aloy twisted her lips in worry as the three Utaru looked at Nil with a combination of shock and uncertainty. _Fire and spit,_ she thought. She’d heard the Utaru were a peaceful society, but… not even basic defenses? “Have any of you ever seen any kind of battle? Any human deaths?” she asked gently.

Sal and Daneet nodded warily, and Sal replied. “The Red Raids. Everyone from Fertile Song lost someone to the Carja.” His eyes darted furtively to Nil, then back to Aloy. 

“And how did you survive the Red Raids, if you didn’t fight?” Aloy was passionately curious. She hoped her questions weren’t coming off as rude. She simply couldn’t imagine not being able to defend herself. Ever since she’d been old enough to hold a bow, Rost had taught her how to take down game, machines, and humans alike. 

“We fled,” Dara replied, without a trace of shame. “We hid in the woods.” Then, unexpectedly, she smiled. “You two may be predators, but the Utaru are very quiet and clever prey. We have special hiding places that kept many of us safe from the Carja.” 

Aloy’s eyes widened in fascination. “May I see them?” she asked, and ignored Nil’s amused little chuckle.

Dara smiled more widely, and her back straightened with pride. But she shook her head. “I’m sorry, huntress, but it would be remiss of me to show these hiding places to you, especially as we aren’t formally allied with the Carja. They’re… something of a tribal secret. But you can ask our governor about them when you arrive in The Heartland. She can decide whether to trust you with this knowledge.” 

Though she was disappointed, Aloy nodded. “I understand.” She turned to Nil. “We should move on. The southern villages will have a better sense of the threat. They may also have different defensive tactics.” 

Nil nodded agreement, and Aloy turned back to Dara. “Do you have any questions for us before we go?” Aloy asked.

“Is Laea all right?” Dara asked anxiously. “Your guards mentioned she was injured on her way to the Sundom.” 

“She’s well,” Aloy reassured her. “Unfortunately, she was assaulted by bandits. But there’s no lasting harm done.” Marad had told her that the Utaru messenger would be escorted home with two Carja guards once she had recovered from her sprained ankle and myriad bruises. 

The three Utaru relaxed, and Dara smiled at Aloy. “Thank you.” 

Then Nil suddenly spoke to Dara. “Your game hunters need to learn to take down human prey. It’s unpleasant for some, or so I’m told, but necessary. Especially if the Tenakth are uniting against you. You’ve been lucky this far north, but your luck will run out eventually.”

Aloy said nothing. Privately she agreed with Nil, but she had been uncertain whether to say so given the fearful reaction that Dara, Sal and Daneet had had to Nil’s earlier proclamation about spilling human blood. 

Dara’s eyebrows contracted with anxiety, but Sal and Daneet gazed back at Nil steadily. Sal swallowed hard, then nodded. “We were discussing this before you came. We… were hoping the Carja would teach us to fight.” 

Aloy glanced askance at Nil. He’d started this line of enquiry, and she was deeply curious to know where he planned to go with it. 

For the umpteenth time, Nil surprised her. He looked over at the two Carja guards who had announced his and Aloy’s arrival to the village. He pointed to one of them. “You. Go back to Meridian. Tell the Sun-King to send four soldiers, preferably one of them a captain. They’ll be teaching rudimentary combat drills.” Then Nil cut his eyes to the second guard. “Start showing these two some basic close-combat maneuvers.” He jerked his head at Sal and Daneet. 

The two Carja guards saluted him smartly, and one of them immediately set off back north towards Meridian. Then Nil quirked one eyebrow at Aloy casually. “Ready to go?”

Aloy gazed up into his silver eyes, overwhelmed by a sudden surge of emotion. She wasn’t sure if he was aware of what he’d just done: of his own initiative, he’d suggested for the Utaru to protect themselves and arranged for their training with a brisk authority. 

He’d helped people. It was exactly the kind of thing she would have done. And now he was acting like it was no big deal. 

Aloy swallowed hard and tore her gaze away from the deep, ethereal pools of Nil’s eyes before she did something stupid. Like throw herself at him. _Focus, Aloy. The Tenakth threat. That’s what matters._ “Yes, let’s go,” she said. She turned to the Utaru again. “Thank you for your time. We’ll be on our way.” 

Dara insisted on replenishing their rations and their water before they set out, and Aloy graciously accepted. Soon enough, she and Nil were on their way again. 

Aloy was quiet as they rode their Striders south through Plainsong. Her mind was preoccupied with thoughts of Nil’s unprecedented helpfulness, and his general… sociability. _He’s changed,_ she thought to herself. Aloy genuinely would never asked this of him - truly, she loved him as he was - but without any prompting, he had somehow become more… socially appropriate. 

She wondered if he was aware of it, or if he’d be angry if she pointed it out. The last thing she wanted was to fracture their fragile truce after the intensity of their argument that morning. 

They rode straight for The Heartland, stopping only once for a drink of water and a bite of food, and arrived in the capital of Plainsong late that evening. Again, there were Carja guards present who had announced their arrival, and Aloy and Nil were greeted by the Utaru governor. 

The governor’s name was Ilya. Her lined face was stern and her manner no-nonsense, but her voice was kind. “Aloy. Nil,” she greeted them briskly. “Thank you for coming. I know you have travelled hard to get here, and I appreciate it. Will you join me for the evening meal? I will tell you what we know of this threat. Then I’ll let you rest. I daresay you’ll need it.”

Aloy frowned at this ominous remark but nodded, and she and Nil followed the governor through the town. The Heartland, as expected, was significantly larger than Fertile Song; it reminded Aloy of a flatter version of Mother’s Heart. Though the buildings were all one-storey, some of them were almost as broad as some of the buildings in the Sundom. She was interested to note that most of the buildings here still had the same flat gardened roofs as the one in Fertile Song. 

Eventually Ilya led them over a small hill to a longhouse. She led them inside, and Aloy curiously examined the interior of the building as Ilya led them through. The main part of the longhouse was a large room furnished with a long, low table with at least a dozen cushions on the floor around the table. It seemed that the Utaru kneeled or sat on cushions instead of using chairs. There were tables and shelves along one wall that were neatly lined with scrolls and tomes, and Aloy’s fingers itched to tap her Focus and scan it all. 

But dutifully she followed Ilya to a small room at the back, separated from the rest of the house by a woven curtain. This room contained a small, low table with two cushions, another shelf with books, and a map on one wall. 

Ilya politely gestured to the table, then pulled a third cushion from the top of the scroll shelf and placed it on the floor by the table for herself. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. I will return shortly with food.” 

Aloy and Nil knelt on the cushions as Ilya swept out of the room. As soon as Ilya was gone, Aloy stood and examined the map on the wall, which showed the Utaru’s territory up to the Carja and Tenakth borders. 

Nil snorted in amusement at her nosiness, and Aloy glanced at him with a wry half-smile. “Come on, you can’t be surprised. I’m not going to pass up this opportunity.” Eagerly she tapped her Focus and scanned the map.

She sat back down beside Nil just as llya returned bearing a tray with three polished wooden plates and three cups, a bowl of salad, a platter of roasted meat, and a steaming vessel wafting a herbal scent. Briskly she laid the dishes on the table and served Nil and Aloy while launching into a description of the current state of affairs. 

“The Tenakth continue to mass at Farmer’s Blessing. They now number in just over a hundred,” Ilya told them, and Aloy felt a lurch of dismay. “We aren’t sure how much longer they will continue to collect before moving further north. We’ve been evacuating the settlements closest to Farmer’s Blessing, but this is far from a permanent solution.” 

“Absolutely,” Aloy agreed, then sipped her herbal tea. “Dara at Fertile Song informed us that their villagers have essentially no experience with combat. Is that true of your people here in The Heartland, and of the other Utaru further south?”

Ilya sighed. “As a rule, we detest violence. It’s something we prefer to avoid at all costs… but as your Carja companion may know, our strict pacifism has not served us well in the past.” She looked at Nil with no rancour, and Nil inclined his head slightly to her. “Since the Red Raids, some Utaru have sought to increase their proficiency in combat. When the Sun-King Avad opened the Sundom to the other tribes, some of our youth travelled to the Sundom to learn from the Carja. Many of them remain there, and rightly so, as we wouldn’t want to risk more Utaru lives in the face of this current crisis. Those who have returned have received some combat training, but they remain inexperienced in actual wartime situations.” 

Aloy nodded in resignation. _So the situation is a bit better here, but far from ideal._ “So you are open to learning the ways of combat?” she clarified. It would make it easier if the Utaru were willing to learn to defend themselves, but she was unwilling to force them into a more violent way of life if it was not what they wanted. 

Ilya sighed again. “We are. We pride ourselves on being open to new ways of life. But I will admit, I wish it had not come to this.” She eyed Aloy and Nil frankly. “There is no way that even our strongest Utaru trainee fighters will be able to face this Tenakth threat alone. I have no shame in telling you that we are in dire need of the Sun-King’s assistance, or I fear we will be obliterated by the Tenakth horde.”

“We were told that Merat is leading the horde,” Nil said. “Is that right?”

Ilya looked at him. “Yes. Do you know of her? She’s… frankly, she’s terrifying. Our scouts say her skin is completely pocked from head to toe with the marks of her conquests.” 

Nil smiled slowly, his silver eyes glittering with excitement. “She is. And don’t worry. She won’t obliterate you. She’ll be dead.” 

Aloy placed a warning hand on his thigh before he could get ahead of himself, then looked at Ilya. “I’m going to try to speak with Merat,” she said. “I want to try and negotiate some kind of truce.” Aloy ignored the way Ilya’s eyebrows leapt high on her forehead. “If speaking with Merat proves… impossible, then we are prepared to eliminate her. Whether that would happen now, or later with the backup of the Carja army, will depend on what we find as we move south.” 

Ilya nodded slowly, but her frown remained. “If you do eliminate Merat, what if another Tenakth simply takes over her command? Will we not be worrying about Tenakth warlords indefinitely?”

Nil shook his head. “They don’t think that way. Their unification is unstructured, with no clear chain of command. They just follow strength. If Merat’s strength is torn away, the horde will crumble, like the dust of ancient bones to the wind.” He smiled again with morbid anticipation, his thumb straying to stroke the handle of his knife. 

Ilya stared at him cautiously for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll trust your judgment in this, both of you. Our traditional ways of dealing with such threats won’t help us for long, so your input will be most welcome.” Then she suddenly shot them both a hard look. “Let me be clear on one thing: the Carja owe us this. I am grateful, but I also consider this their duty as decent people, if that is how the Sun-King wishes his people to be seen.” 

Aloy inclined her head respectfully. “You and I are in complete agreement about that, Governor.” 

Ilya gave a brief nod of satisfaction. Then she looked at their untouched plates and waved her hands in a motherly gesture. “Come now, eat up.”

Hastily Aloy took a bite of salad to appease the governor, and was pleased at the freshness of the greens and the sweet tang of the dressing. 

Ilya sipped her tea as she watched them eat. “Do you have any questions that I can answer?” she finally asked. “Aloy, I know you are a stranger to this land. And Nil, your time in Plainsong was under… very different circumstances. Is there anything you wish to know that will help you in your quest here?”

Aloy immediately sat up straighter. Did she ever have questions! Beside her, Nil snorted with fond amusement, and she shot him a quick wry smile before taking a bite of the roasted meat (turkey, it turned out to be). She swallowed her bite of turkey, then turned to Ilya eagerly. “I do have questions. But they’re not all relating to the Tenakth. I’m just… curious. First of all, the gardens on your rooftops…”

******************  
Some time later, after Aloy had sated her curiosity and she and Nil had both sated their hunger, Ilya smiled warmly at them both and rose from her cushion. “Let me show you to the inn. Your accommodations are complimentary, of course. The least I can do to thank you for travelling all this way.”

Aloy and Nil rose as well, then followed Ilya back through the town to one of the larger buildings. Ilya left them in the care of the innkeeper with a promise to meet them in the morning, and the innkeeper led Aloy and Nil to their room.

Their single room, with one bed. 

Clearly Ilya had gotten the impression that they were a couple. Aloy turned to the innkeeper to sort out the confusion, but Nil took her arm. “Leave it, Suntress. These people have enough to deal with. Besides, you wouldn’t dare impose on them, would you?” He smirked as he tugged her into the room.

Aloy muttered resentfully to herself but allowed Nil to pull her inside and close the door behind them. Immediately Nil kicked off his sandals and removed his weapons, then pulled off his vest. 

Aloy flushed as an instinctive roar of lust ripped through her body. Nil removing his clothes had always meant ecstasy for her, but now that he was forbidden fruit, it was nothing but torture. She bit her lip and turned away from him, then slowly arranged her weapons neatly against the wall as she stalled for time. 

Finally, when her cheeks had cooled to a normal temperature, she turned back towards the bed, and another wave of desire pooled between her legs. Nil was stretched out on the bed wearing only his silk trousers. His arms were folded comfortably behind his head, emphasizing the bulge of his biceps and the sweet expanse of his bronzed chest. His knees were spread, with one leg dangling lazily off the side of the bed, and Aloy’s treacherous eyes snagged on the bulge between his thighs. 

_Bloody Metal Devil spit and fire,_ Aloy cursed bad-temperedly to herself as her blood sang in response to his mostly-naked body. That insidious little voice in her head was back, telling her pointedly that Avad had never elicited this kind of mindless, _exquisite_ lust in her, and why would she settle for second best if she could have first?

Aloy clenched her jaw and walked stiffly over to the bed, then pulled the pillow out from under Nil’s head. “What was that for?” Nil protested. 

Aloy didn’t answer. She poked around in a chest in the corner of the room and pulled out a blanket, then began arranging the blanket and pillow on the floor. 

“What are you doing?” Nil drawled, sounding utterly amused. 

Aloy clenched her teeth so hard they ground together painfully. “I’m going to sleep. Good night.” She placed the metal lid on the small oil candle that lit the room, leaving the room dark except for the moonlight shining in through the window. _That’s better. Now I don’t have to look at him,_ she thought grimly. She knelt on her makeshift pallet and took off her belt pouch, then sat and took off her sandals, all the while studiously ignoring him. 

“You’re being ridiculous. Come share the bed.” Nil’s mocking voice pierced the darkness. “It’s very comfortable. And I know how much you like a cozy blanket.” 

Aloy glared at him. He was right. She did like cozy blankets when she had the opportunity to sleep indoors. But that wasn’t the point. “No. It’s not right.” 

“Come on, Suntress, get over here. I promise I won’t do anything that precious Avad wouldn’t like.” 

This stilled her, and she felt a pang of guilt. It was the first time since they’d left Meridian that Nil had made any reference to her relationship with Avad. 

But strangely, the pang of guilt she felt wasn’t for Avad. It was for Nil. Aloy suddenly felt bad for him. He’d made it clear that he still loved her, but she was with Avad now, and she couldn’t even give Nil the courtesy of chastely sharing accommodations with him? 

The sudden awkwardness finally got Aloy to cave in. “All right. Fine,” she conceded with ill grace. She picked up the pillow from the floor and tossed it onto the far side of the bed. 

The bed was pushed against the wall, and Nil was reclined on the side of the bed farther from the wall. After removing her Carja vest and tassets, Aloy had to crawl gingerly over him to her side of the bed. She prayed that he couldn’t feel the heat emanating from between her legs as she briefly straddled his knees. 

Once she was on the bed, she squished herself against the wall and turned on her side so she wasn’t facing him. “Good night,” she muttered. 

Nil sighed loudly. “Fire and blood, woman, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack. _Relax_. I’m a perfect gentleman. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.” Then he chuckled… a low, sensual sound that poured along Aloy’s skin like an electric shock and brought her nipples to painful attention. 

“Nil,” she hissed, “Stop it with the innuendo. I’m with Avad now. You can’t keep trying to win me over like it’s a competition. I’m not a prize to be won.”

The bed shifted as Nil turned on his side to face her, and his deep, sardonic voice was closer to her as he replied. “Why do you always use this analogy, Suntress? I know you’re not an object. You’re the most stubbornly willful person I’ve ever met. Nobody could ever own you.” 

Her cheeks flushed with pleasure at this comment, but she remained curled on her side like a question mark. “Fine. But you still have to lay off. It’s not right to keep… having these discussions. It’s not fair.” 

“I don’t understand why not,” Nil insisted. “I know you don’t love him.” 

Aloy swallowed hard, then finally she sat up and shuffled backwards so her back was against the head of the bed. She wrapped her arms around her knees. “You don’t know that,” she said firmly. 

“I do,” Nil said with supreme confidence. He rolled onto his back again, his arms tucked under his head as he glanced up at her. “I can tell from your face. I can tell from watching your body. I know what your love looks like.”

Aloy was quiet for a long time. Then Nil’s sleepy voice broke through the darkness again. “He doesn’t love you either.”

This surprised Aloy, and she glanced at him. His eyes were closed and he looked completely relaxed. In a quiet voice, Aloy said, “You can’t possibly know that. You’ve hardly spent five minutes around him since coming back to Meridian. What makes you think you know how Avad feels?”

Nil yawned widely. Then, in a drowsy voice, he murmured, “I just know. He might share your bed, but his reach is shallow. He doesn’t know what it is to love a Stormbird.” Moments later, he was asleep. 

Aloy remained awake for a long time. She listened quietly to Nil’s easy breathing and poked honestly at her own feelings. 

Nil wasn’t wrong. Aloy had never felt for Avad a fraction of the way she did for Nil. In the three-odd months that she and Avad had been together, she’d been waiting to feel more, hoping to develop the same bone-deep, breathless connection that she shared with Nil. But it had never come. And Aloy never felt that Avad came to know her as deeply as Nil had in the same span of time.

And what about Nil’s assertion that Avad didn’t love her? What if it was true? _I don’t mind,_ Aloy thought. _Actually… it would be something of a relief._ And that knowledge was jarring. If Aloy didn’t love Avad, and she didn’t particularly care whether he loved her, what was the point? 

A long, thoughtful time later, Aloy slid carefully out of the bed and tiptoed over to the blanket on the floor. She picked it up and brought it back to the bed, then carefully arranged it over Nil’s sleeping form. 

Then she crawled back onto the bed and slid under the blanket. She snuggled down on her side facing Nil and quietly watched his sleeping profile, admiring his impossibly long eyelashes and his slight frown. 

Her mind made up, Aloy finally closed her eyes. She might still be unsure what to do about Nil, but she did know what she needed to do when she returned to the Sundom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, the one-bed/two-people sexual tension trope. HAHAHA. I made myself laugh. Am I alone? LOL


	9. Doubt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy and Nil continue on towards the Tenakth camp, and Aloy starts to ask herself some uncomfortable questions.

Wakefulness drifted slowly over him, lapping at the edges of his mind like gentle waves nibbling at the shore. 

The first thing Nil became aware of was the heat. He felt so nice and warm. Not just from the blanket that was draped over him (when had that happened, he wondered?), but from the warm, pliant body snuggled against him. 

Nil didn’t want to wake up yet in case this was a dream. Reluctantly, slowly, he opened his eyes. 

The unruly red flames of her hair filled his vision, and Nil swallowed as he realized the position he and Suntress were in, curled together like two nesting spoons. Her back was pressed flush against his chest, and his left arm was wrapped over her waist, his hand resting between her breasts. Her left hand was curled over his, her fingers entwined tightly with his own. 

This was how they’d slept almost every night in all the time they’d been together. Even in the ugly days at the end, when the tense silences had been so brittle that Nil had feared a single word would shatter them, he and Suntress had slept curled together like this, as though the shared heat of their bodies at night could somehow burn away the chill that infused their days. 

A wave of painful yearning rose in his chest, and Nil breathed slowly to calm it. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to spoil this moment. But as he listened to the cadence of her breathing, he realized with a jolt that she wasn’t asleep either. 

Quietly, he said her name. “Suntress?”

She squeezed his hand slightly, more like a convulsive tensing of her fingers than a conscious squeeze. Then, very quietly, she whispered her reply. “Yeah?”

Nil’s heart was pounding so loudly in his ears that he was sure she must feel it through her back. Slowly he raised himself onto his right elbow so he could look down at her. 

Her eyes were closed. As Nil watched her, she bit her bottom lip, then took a deep breath. The rising of her chest pushed his hand closer to her breasts. 

A sudden surge of lust lit him from the inside, and his usual morning wood pulsed even harder. This was the closest he’d been to her in over a year, the closest she’d allowed him to get, and the intensity of his desire for her made him light-headed. 

Slowly and gently, so very gently, he slid his left hand down to her ribs and pulled her towards him so she was lying flat on her back. Finally she opened her eyes and looked up at him, and Nil lost his breath. 

Her eyes were burning with unabashed desire. The intensity of her hazel eyes reminded him of a canister of blaze being struck by a fire arrow. Her lips were parted slightly, and Nil’s gaze greedily traced the fluttering pulse at her neck. He was painfully aware of the position of his left hand on her body: just below her ribs, so damn close to her breasts. He could feel the rapid rise and fall of her breathing through his palm. 

Nil’s body screamed for _more_. The hardness of his cock was a whisper away from her hip, his hand a whisper away from her breast, and the way she was looking at him was almost enough for him to take her right now, to have what he’d been missing so desperately for over a year. He wanted to stroke her familiar scars with his fingers, taste her familiar wet heat on his tongue, drive himself into the deepest part of her until she healed him and made him whole again. 

The heat of her gaze was _almost_ enough, but not quite. Something was off, something miniscule but important. Nil detected it with the senses of a predator. 

Suntress was hesitant. Her desire was painfully, arousingly obvious, but she was waiting for him to act. She was too passive, too uncertain. He never wanted to see uncertainty in his Stormbird’s face. 

With an enormous effort of will, Nil lifted his hand from her ribs and delicately brushed her hair back from her face. “Ready to move on?” he murmured. 

Immediately he knew he’d said the right thing: her body lost much of its tension. If possible, her gaze became even hotter, but she smiled at him in relief. “Yes. Let's go,” she whispered back. 

Slowly and very reluctantly, Nil rolled away from her and off the bed. While he dressed, he watched her hungrily as she put her armour back on and slid her weapons onto her back. They dressed in silence, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable; it felt heavy with warm expectation, and with hope. 

Once they were fully dressed, Suntress stepped over to the door, and Nil followed her. Then she paused with her hand on the door handle. 

Nil tilted his head. “What’s wrong?” Quickly he swept a glance around the room; she hadn’t left anything behind.

Suntress didn’t answer. Nil watched curiously as her fingers clenched briefly on the handle of the door. Then, slowly, she turned around to face him. 

Her eyes shone with warmth, but her expression was... pleading, somehow. The corner of her lips turned up in a brief wry smile, then she sighed and dropped her eyes. 

Nil frowned slightly. Her facial expression was too complex. He wasn’t sure what it meant. “Is something wrong?” 

She lifted her eyes again, and her expression was more pleading than ever. She bit her lower lip nervously. “No. I just…”

She looked so _uncertain_. It was so unlike her. Nil wanted her to be decisive and sure. Abruptly he penned her against the door with his forearms and cradled her neck in his hands. He didn’t press against her; he wouldn’t do that until she explicitly invited him in. But he couldn’t resist lowering his face to hers and skimming his nose along her cheekbone, then along her hairline to inhale her sweet, familiar scent. 

He savoured her tiny gasp, the subtle rising of her chest, the bobbing of her throat as she swallowed hard. Finally, slowly, he pulled back to look into her brilliant green-and-gold eyes. “You know what I want, Suntress,” he told her in a low, firm voice. “I want you, forever. I’ll wait until you tell me that’s what you want too.”

Again, it seemed that he’d said the right thing; her shoulders relaxed, her eyes fluttered closed and she swallowed again. Then she nodded her head. 

Nil smiled. He knew his Suntress. He knew it was just a matter of time. 

Now all he had to do was wait. 

**********************

It was midday by the time Aloy and Nil were ready to continue their journey south towards Farmer’s Blessing. To Aloy’s delight, Ilya had agreed to show her one of the special hiding places that the Utaru had used to protect themselves during the Red Raids: ingeniously built underground bunkers, reinforced with strong wooden slats and camouflaged by earth and sod. The bunkers held approximately ten adults each, and could be used as shelter for about a day before the air would become stifling. Ilya told Aloy that the bunkers contained some kind of vent system of Utaru design, but she wouldn’t tell Aloy more than that. Aloy had conceded the point with a rueful smile; after all, each tribe was entitled their trade secrets.

Finally, she and Nil were ready to leave. Aloy grasped Ilya’s forearm in farewell. “Thank you for your hospitality, Ilya. The Sun-King and his council are very interested in formalizing an alliance between the Carja and the Utaru, so if you - or an advisor you trust to make decisions on your behalf - can travel to Meridian within a week to speak with the council, that would be ideal.” 

Ilya nodded, her brows drawn in a pensive frown. “Thank you, Aloy. I will consider this. I feel that my place is here with my people, but an Utaru representative will set out for Meridian as soon as possible.” 

“The Carja guards will escort your representative back to Meridian,” Nil said suddenly. He cut a glance at the two guards who were waiting nearby, and they stood to attention and saluted him smartly. 

Ilya tilted him a grateful nod. “Thank you, Nil. Peace and safety to you both in your travels.”

Soon after, Nil and Aloy were mounted on a pair of Broadheads and heading south. Aloy was preoccupied again: with her thoughts about the Utaru and their interesting ways of life, but also with her thoughts about Nil. 

Waking up this morning wrapped in his embrace was like reliving a favourite memory. Even when unconscious, it seemed that their bodies couldn’t bear to be apart. And the look on Nil’s face when he’d gazed down at her this morning, with his silver eyes incandescent with desire… 

Aloy had wanted so badly to say yes to him, to bury herself in the exquisite pleasure she knew he could give her, but her words had caught in her throat. There was still so much history between her and Nil that wasn’t sorted out, and Aloy was afraid of making another mistake with him just for the sake of slaking their thirst for each other.

And then there was Avad. Even if Aloy knew that her liaison with him was all but over, she owed him an honest conversation. Aloy now felt guilty that she hadn’t broken things off with Avad before leaving Meridian. If she’d been more honest with herself about her feelings for Nil, things would have been much simpler for Avad and herself both. 

When she and Nil had risen to leave the inn that morning, Aloy felt like they were breaking a magic spell. The air in the room had felt electric, not just with lust, but with _potential_. She hadn’t wanted to break that spell, to rejoin the real world just yet. She’d turned back to Nil, wanting to make the moment last just a little longer. And fire and spit, did he ever leave an impression on her in that moment… 

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He looked totally relaxed as he moved in sync with the Broadhead’s rolling gait. He looked happy, actually. Aloy wondered if it would ruin his good mood to ask him… 

Nil suddenly turned his head to meet her eyes, and Aloy quickly looked away, flushing slightly at being caught staring. Nil smirked. “Suntress, I can see the questions in your head leaking across your face like the blood from a freshly cracked skull. What do you want to say?” 

_All-Mother’s sake, I’m just going to ask him,_ she thought in exasperation. “You’re being all polite and helpful now. Why?” she blurted gracelessly.

Nil’s smirk widened further. “Maybe I just felt like changing it up a little,” he quipped. 

Aloy frowned at him. “Really though. Why? You make polite conversation sometimes. You apologized about the Red Raids, even though I know you don’t really regret participating in them. And… you’re helping people now, Nil. _You_ set up that combat training at Fertile Song, not me. Why are you being so… sociable?”

Nil shrugged. “I’m just doing what I thought you would do.” 

Aloy suddenly remembered Luka saying that he followed her moral code. It felt like so much had happened since then. She stared at him in confusion. “But why? Doing what I would do is… it’s sometimes the opposite of what you would _want_ to do. Why…”

Nil gazed at her frankly. “After you sent me away, imagining the thoughts that would spill from your mouth made it feel like you were close by. It was… soothing. It felt like you were there when you weren’t.” 

Aloy’s breath caught painfully in her chest at this. The idea of Nil having one-sided conversations with her in his head, taking comfort from the ghost of a loved one gone… it was what she did when she whispered to Rost in the mornings sometimes. 

Suddenly she felt a deep pain in her chest, like her heart was breaking, and she nearly burst into tears again. She pressed her lips together hard, and waited until the lump of grief in her throat had dissolved before speaking again. “But… we’re in the same place now, travelling together again, and you’re _still_ being sociable. Why continue doing what I would do even though I’m with you?” 

Nil was quiet for a long moment. Then he replied in a slow, thoughtful voice. “I haven’t changed, Suntress, if that’s what you’re wondering. I still adore my bloody hunt more than anything else. And I do _not_ like talking to people.” Then he sighed musically. “But I’ll admit, these… social calls don’t hold the same dull horror as they used to.” He smiled teasingly at her. “They’re more of an annoying poke in the head than a vicious stab in the eye, if you catch my meaning.” 

Aloy smiled at his gory metaphor, but she nodded in serious acknowledgement. In her chest, a tiny flower of excitement and hope was starting to germinate. Aloy truly didn’t want Nil to change; she loved him as he was, and always had. But _if_ he was willing to help people now, to talk to them, to act as an authority at times rather than always being the renegade, even if he was tolerating it rather than enjoying it… 

This was a huge deal. It could open doors for them. New possibilities.

It could give them choices. 

Aloy was suddenly lightheaded with the possibility of trying again, with more wisdom and experience to guide them. Hope, golden and shining, was buzzing through her veins, making her feel giddy. 

_A different solution than sending me away. Something more original,_ Nil had said. 

She needed to think about it more, but now Aloy knew what she wanted for herself, and for Nil: a choice. 

A compromise. 

A second chance. 

************

Two more days of travelling finally brought Aloy and Nil to the borders of a village called Greenstone, which was the last settlement just north of Farmer’s Blessing. These past two days had truly driven home the severity of the Tenakth threat: the Utaru villages that Aloy and Nil passed through were increasingly crowded with refugees from the south, half of whom were wounded from encounters with the Tenakth raiders. As they'd moved through the overcrowded villages, Aloy had refused the Utaru’s heartbreakingly generous offers of food; she and Nil were perfectly capable of foraging for themselves, and if they had to travel on light rations for a few days, this was no problem. They were healthy and strong, unlike many of the refugees. 

With every battered face they saw, every victim beyond the help of anything but Dreamwillow, every orphaned child and bereaved parent or sibling or partner, the determination in Aloy's chest pounded more loudly like a war drum. At one point, Nil gazed down at her with an excited, animalistic smile. “I can see your rage, Suntress. Are you _sure_ you don't want to negotiate with weapons instead of words?”

Truthfully, she was tempted. The evidence of merciless killing and pain around them reminded her forcibly of Helis. But she grimly shook her head. “We have to try,” she reasoned. “If we could talk Merat down, we could save a lot more senseless deaths.” But Aloy was swiftly losing her conviction that talking was going to salvage this situation. 

Nil shrugged easily. “As you say,” he replied. 

But Aloy felt uneasy. Nil had been quite clear from the outset that trying to talk to Merat wouldn't get them anywhere, but she'd overridden him... even though he knew the Tenakth better than she did. 

_Nil’s probably right about Merat,_ she thought worriedly. Maybe Avad should immediately have sent his armies south to Farmer’s Blessing. _I… should have listened._

Merat wasn't the only thing Nil might be right about. He was right about Aloy’s feelings. He was probably right about Avad’s as well. 

Suddenly Aloy felt crushingly guilty. She'd always known Nil was intelligent and uncannily perceptive when he wanted to be, but at some point during their relationship, she'd… forgotten. She'd stopped seeing him as an equal partner. She'd stopped trying to meet him halfway. 

Aloy had always disliked Vanasha’s cruel nickname for Nil, but she now realized it to be true: she'd started treating Nil like a pet, expecting him not only to follow her, but to do so unquestioningly. Time and time again she'd quashed his suggestions and his will… and he'd allowed it because he didn't know better. 

Nil had never loved anyone but her, so he'd always done exactly as she said. And she'd taken it for granted.

Now, with the perfect insight of retrospection, Aloy realized that she should never have allowed him to follow her so mindlessly in the first place. It wasn’t fair for her to expect him to do exactly as she said all the time. He had motivations and wishes of his own, even if they didn’t match hers. 

As Aloy stared out at the village of Greenstone, with Nil just behind her like a faithful shadow, a new and unwelcome self-doubt rose in her heart.

 _What am I doing?_ she wondered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *fans self* Smut is gradually coming. Can you tell? *wink*


	10. Not Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy expresses her doubts to Nil. Later, she and Nil confront the Tenakth leader at Farmer's Blessing.
> 
> A/N: A lil' hint of smut. Maybe I'll change the rating on this fic to Explicit... ;)

Aloy finished crafting another firebomb and placed it on top of the others. Nil was crouched in the grass beside her making arrows, and he raised one eyebrow at her in amusement. “Are we planning a negotiation or a massacre, Suntress? Not that I’d protest the latter.” He smiled ghoulishly. 

Aloy smiled back, though her nerves were jangling. “Better safe than sorry,” she replied. From everything that Nil and the Utaru here at Greenstone had said, the chances of a negotiation were looking slim to none.

Aloy was worried. Her doubts had followed her into Greenstone, nipping at her mind like Snapmaws while she and Nil spoke with the village’s head and a few other stout-hearted Utaru who had remained here to receive them. She couldn’t stop thinking that all this time, this idea - to try and talk to Merat - had been a bad one. Her mind kept replaying the words of Ullia, the only other Tenakth she had met, so long ago at Blackwing Snag: _All the Carja did was talk. Talk and bleed. Talk and shackle me._ She felt stupid that he hadn’t remembered it before.

Suddenly Aloy turned to Nil. “Maybe you _should_ just kill Merat. Maybe… maybe negotiating isn’t a good idea.” 

Slowly he lifted his gaze from the ridgewood shaft in his hands. Aloy expected a smile, some kind of gory quip, but to her surprise, he frowned at her. “Suntress, where is this doubt coming from? Why do you question yourself? Your uncertainty is jarring, like a dull arrow that refuses to pierce the flesh.” 

Aloy blinked at him in surprise. Then ruefully she berated herself. _Stop being surprised that he knows what you’re thinking. He knows you better than anyone,_ she scolded herself. 

She pursed her lips and looked at him frankly. “You’re the one who knows the Tenakth. You should be making this plan, not me. I’m used to being in charge. I’m used to... knowing the answers, or how to find them. But I shouldn’t be the only one making the decisions. We’re… partners in this.” She swallowed hard, knowing that she wasn’t just talking about the Tenakth anymore. She wondered if Nil knew it too. 

Nil gazed at her for a long moment, a pensive frown on his face, his pale grey eyes glowing in the evening light. Then he reached out and gently tilted her chin up with his fingers. “Your self-confidence has always been well-placed, Suntress. You do things that nobody else can do. You possess knowledge that no one else can fathom. Why wouldn’t you be in charge? The Stormbird doesn’t dominate the skies by asking the Watcher for permission to fly.”

“But I’m not the only one who knows things,” she argued. “ _You’re_ the one here with the knowledge that no one else possesses. And I’m not the only one whose opinion matters. What you want matters too.” 

Nil tilted his head, frowning now with confusion. “You know what I want. I just want you.”

Aloy smiled, exasperation and love warring in her chest… and a sudden surge of sadness for him. It was so obvious that he thought his desires were secondary to hers. Without meaning to, she’d done this to him. She’d made him think his opinions and his feelings didn’t matter as much as hers. 

Remorse squeezed Aloy’s heart until she couldn’t breathe. She bowed her head, unable to speak for a moment. _One thing at a time,_ she reminded herself. _This Tenakth problem comes first, then… us. I’ll find a way to fix this._

Finally she lifted her eyes back to his. “Nil, you tell me what you think we should do about Merat. I’ll follow your lead.”

Nil eyed her as though she’d grown a second head. Then the corner of his lips lifted in a smirk. “Are you flirting with me? Because it’s working.” 

Aloy snorted a laugh. Then suddenly she was laughing so hard she couldn’t stop. It felt like months of tension, months of angst and unhappiness, were rolling out of her all at once, and she couldn’t tell if the tears stinging her eyes were of mirth or repressed grief. 

Nil smiled indulgently at her until she regained control of herself. Then he stood up and held out his hand to help her rise. “Fine. You want to follow my lead? Here’s what we should do.”

****************************

That night, Aloy and Nil strolled openly into the Tenakth camp in Farmer’s Blessing, fully armed and arrogant. Nil had assured her that their lives would be immediately forfeit if they were caught sneaking into the camp, but that the Tenakth would respect a strong entrance. “If nothing else,” Nil had told her, “the shocking sight of two uncowed fighters will make them pause.”

The Tenakth were variously eating, resting, or sparring. But as Aloy and Nil walked along the main path of the village, the people they passed fell quiet, then slowly approached them with incredulity or mocking amusement. Some of the warriors called out to Nil, calling him the ‘Carja interloper’ or taunting him for running away from the Bloodlands. A few of them eyed Aloy in a way that made her skin crawl, but she simply raised one eyebrow and returned their leering with the coldest, most disgusted look she could muster.

Despite the enemies collecting on all sides, Aloy and Nil continued along the path at a relaxed pace. Aloy’s casualness was an act, but she knew that Nil’s was not. After all, this was the exact setting where he felt most at home: the air was heavy with the threat of violence, like the humidity before a jungle storm, and Aloy could practically smell the bloodlust emanating from Nil’s skin. 

At that moment, one of the nearby warriors took a step towards Nil, his fist clenched around his spear. “Trespasser,” he hissed, then spat at Nil’s feet. “I’ll spill your-” 

Nil moved in the blink of an eye. He backhanded the warrior across the face to distract him, then grabbed his spear and slammed the butt of the spear into the warrior’s stomach, knocking the air from him and making him double over. Then Nil grabbed the man by the throat and held the spear to his neck. “Where is Merat?” he demanded. 

Aloy breathed slowly through her nose and stared coolly at the assembled Tenakth in a pretense of boredom. The warrior in Nil’s grip sneered at him, then jerked his chin towards a cabin about fifty paces away, on a small hill to the northeast. “There. Approach her, if you wish to invite your own death upon you,” he rasped.

Nil thrust the warrior away so that he stumbled into his comrades.”I don’t invite death. I bring it with me. It’s a gift.” Then he and Aloy continued their confident saunter toward Merat’s cabin. 

Nil’s plan actually involved a true compromise: they would openly announce themselves to Merat, then Nil would give Aloy the opportunity to try and talk to the Tenakth leader. If talking didn’t work, and the opportunity to kill Merat without being killed themselves arose, Nil would take it. But if not… 

“What happens if we can’t talk her down and can’t kill her?” Aloy had asked. Nil had twisted his lips in thought, then shrugged casually. “Hard to say. We don’t know what we’ll find in Farmer’s Blessing, so it’s too hard to plan.” Then he’d grinned at her. “We’ll improvise, Suntress. You’re good at that.”

Aloy had snorted. He wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t mean she particularly enjoyed it. 

So here they were, nearing the cabin where the most notoriously fearsome Tenakth warrior had made her temporary base. For the umpteenth time, Aloy was grateful that she’d thought to send the two Carja guards in Greenstone back to Meridian to tell Avad and the council what they were planning, with the instruction that if she and Nil didn’t return to Meridian in six days, they should assume the worst. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Nil’s judgment. She just didn’t trust what would happen once they stepped through this cabin door. 

After what seemed like a very long walk but was really just a few moments, they reached Merat’s cabin, and Nil wrenched the door open unceremoniously. His total lack of social grace in this moment was more familiar to Aloy than his newly acquired politeness, and somehow it comforted her. She followed Nil through the door into the cabin.

The cabin was occupied by two Tenakth men and one woman, and Aloy finally got her first glimpse of the notorious Merat. She was short, only a few inches taller than Aloy, and stocky with muscle. Her blonde hair was bound to her skull in tight cornrows, and as Ilya had said, every scrap of her exposed skin, from her forehead down to her chest and arms, was covered in intricate patterns of dots and lines to celebrate her countless conquests. 

Merat turned her head sharply when Nil and Aloy burst in the door. Her brown eyes widened in shock as she recognized Nil, then her lips curled in a disgusted sneer. “Kadar? You _dare_ to set foot in my presence? I can only assume you’ve come to sacrifice your blood to my cause.” She jerked her head at the two men beside her. 

Immediately the two Tenakth men grabbed Aloy and Nil. Aloy managed to punch her guard in the face before he grabbed her arms and wrenched them high behind her back, making her gasp in pain. He kicked the backs of her knees, making her land hard in a kneeling position. Aloy snarled with anger at her forced submission, then watched anxiously as Nil and the other Tenakth male scrapped violently. 

Then suddenly Merat was beside Aloy, holding a long, serrated knife to Aloy’s neck. “Stop this, or I’ll gut the bloodhair like a fish.”

Nil immediately froze, and the Tenakth guard kicked the backs of his knees, forcing him into a kneeling position beside Aloy. Nil’s face was the epitome of feral rage as he glared at Merat. 

Merat gave a soft laugh as she crouched in front of Aloy. “You’ve gone soft, Kadar. Nothing used to stop you in the middle of a scrap. Not even our laws.” Merat lowered her knife, then traced her fingers gently along the side of Aloy’s face, sending an abhorrent crawling chill down her spine. “Has this little bloodhair tamed you?”

“Release me and find out how tamed I am,” Nil snarled. His voice was so rough with rage that he hardly sounded human. “And keep your fucking filthy hands off her.” 

Merat brutally punched Nil across the face. Aloy clenched her jaw to bite back a scream of rage as a spray of blood from Nil’s split lip scattered across the room. “I’ll do exactly as I see fit with your sweet little bloodhair,” Merat said coldly as she turned her attention back to Aloy.

Aloy reared her head back and then _slammed_ the crown of her head into Merat’s face. Merat stumbled back in shock and lifted her hand to her now-bleeding nose. Before Merat could say a word, Aloy spoke. “We’ve come to talk, so _you_ need to shut up and listen.”

Nil shot her a proud little smile through his bloodied teeth, and Aloy gave him a very tiny nod without moving her eyes from Merat’s face. _Strength and boarheaded, stubborn dominance,_ she reminded herself. That’s what Nil had recommended, so that’s what she would present, though the crown of her head was now pounding with pain.

Merat dabbed her bloodied face and examined her fingers, then suddenly laughed. She stood up and folded her arms, ignoring the blood still dripping from her nose. “I like this kind of talk. So talk, bloodhair.” 

Aloy forced herself not to register her surprise at Merat’s agreement. _So far, so good._ “First of all, just know that we have the full strength of the Carja army behind us,” she said coolly. “And the Carja want you to leave the Utaru in peace. I understand that the Tenakth have rules to keep from exterminating yourselves. The Utaru also want to avoid extermination, at your hands. So what would you accept in exchange for leaving the Utaru alone? What do you want?”

Merat crouched slowly in front of Aloy until their faces were mere inches apart. “ _Everything,_ ” she whispered. “Including the Sundom. So I’m afraid your little expedition here has been for nothing. Nothing the Carja King can offer will be enough.” She stood up straight again and briefly addressed Nil. “Your people are weakened and frail from the war, while we grow stronger. Why would I ever back down?” 

Then Merat turned towards a rack of spears in the corner of the room, and Aloy’s stomach lurched. _Looks like we’ll have to improvise soon,_ she thought with deep dismay as Merat lovingly stroked a finger along the length of one spear. The Tenakth woman glanced dismissively at Aloy. “I’ll allow you take this message back to your king: the only thing that will stop us is death, and we are the bearers of that wonderful news. Not you.” 

Nil gave a sudden dark laugh. “You’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with. This bloodhair and I have gifted a bloody end to more people than you have warriors. We’ve seen your paltry camp.”

Merat shot him a vicious smile. “You have no idea how many warriors I have on the way. This is but a fraction, I assure you.” She waved a hand for the man holding Aloy to stand her up, and obediently he hauled Aloy up roughly by the arms. 

Then Merat selected a long-handled spear from the rack and slowly approached Nil. “Throw the bloodhair back out into the village,” she said to Aloy’s guard. “Let her return to Meridian with her tail between her legs. I’ll take great pleasure in finally spilling this trespasser’s blood.” She lowered her spear to point at Nil’s sneering face. 

Aloy wrenched her arms from the guard’s grip with sudden desperate strength. “So what, you're going to just kill a man who’s pinned down on the ground like a stuck boar? Too afraid to face a stronger opponent head on? You're _scared._ You think he’ll take your power and your stories from you!” 

Merat glanced at Aloy, her brown eyes narrowed. “Shut your mouth, little girl, or I'll kill you instead.”

 _She’s angry. That’s good. That means mistakes,_ Aloy thought. She ignored the guard as he grabbed her arms again. “Wouldn't that be fitting,” Aloy sneered. “The great and fearsome Merat, killing a little girl. I see you for what you are. You're a weak, cowardly chunk of rusting slag, and when you’re dead, your stories will crumble to ashes and your blood will be lost to the oceans of time!” 

Merat swelled with rage and turned her spear to Aloy. “How _dare_ you?” she hissed venomously. “You dare speak our words like you know their meaning? You, a mere child, think to speak…”

But Aloy wasn’t listening. She’d gotten what she wanted: Merat was distracted, leaving Nil attended only by his single guard.

Faster than anyone except Aloy would have believed possible, Nil ripped his knife from its sheath and stabbed his guard in the thigh. The sudden, prolific spurt of blood that ensued indicated that Nil had likely hit a critical artery. Nil then spun on one knee and sliced Aloy’s guard from navel to sternum. 

Merat instinctively whipped her attention back to Nil at his sudden violence, and Aloy hauled her bow from her back and swiftly shot an arrow at Merat. Her nerves were jangling, and her aim wasn’t as sure as it usually was; instead of hitting a critical spot, the arrow slammed home into Merat’s upper chest just below the shoulder, and Merat stumbled back at the impact and then fell clumsily to her knees with an animalistic snarl.

“Run!” Aloy yelled at Nil, and together they burst from the cabin and ran over the rise in a vaguely northern direction. A second later, Aloy heard an unearthly scream of rage from the cabin that set the hairs on her arms on edge: Merat’s war scream. She’d only ever heard that type of scream once before, when she’d first laid eyes on Ullia. 

She and Nil sprinted away from the camp. Moments later, shouting began to ring out from the camp. Aloy had no doubt that the Tenakth would soon be in pursuit.

“Aloy, what the _fuck_ are you doing?” Nil suddenly shouted at her. Aloy was fumbling in her pouches, which was slowing her pace a bit. Finally she found what she'd been seeking: she grabbed a handful of the firebombs she’d crafted earlier and thrust them at Nil. Swiftly she pulled out her tinder kit, then grabbed Nil’s arm to stop him so she could light the bombs. 

“Damn damn damn damn,” Aloy hissed as she missed striking a spark the first time because of her shaking fingers. Finally she sparked the firebombs into life and grabbed two of the bombs from Nil, then they continued their desperate flight. 

Aloy glanced over her shoulder; a number of the Tenakth were giving chase. She paused for a half a second, then lobbed a firebomb towards their pursuers. 

Fire exploded in a three-meter radius as the bomb landed in the midst of the Tenakth. She and Nil tossed the remaining three firebombs, creating a raging inferno between themselves and the Tenakth. Then they pelted away again into the dark, their escape camouflaged by the dazzling light of the flames.

 _We need someplace to lay low. We need to find a bunker,_ Aloy thought feverishly. One of the Utaru’s hiding-holes was exactly what they needed. Fortunately, Ilya had shown Aloy how to recognize the locations of the hiding-holes, and as soon as they were out of sight of Farmer’s Blessing, Aloy looked around until she found the subtle sign of an Utaru bunker: a small white boulder near a patch of ridgewood. Completely innocuous, unless one knew what to look for. 

Aloy swiftly tapped her Focus and scanned the area; there was no one nearby except Nil, so she knelt in front of the boulder and felt in the grass until her fingers found a seam in the ground. Swiftly she pried her fingers into the seam, then lifted the lid of the bunker. 

“Get in,” she told Nil, and he swiftly slid into the hole. She followed him and dropped the short distance to the floor of the bunker, and Nil reached up to pull the bunker lid tight. 

It was pitch black in the small bunker, but Ilya had shown Aloy where to find candles in a crate on the floor. Aloy slid her fingers along the wall to the back of the bunker until her foot found a crate on the floor, then she swiftly opened the crate and felt around until her fingers met the smooth stone globe of an Utaru oil candle. “Nil,” she called softly, and eventually she felt the touch of his fingers against her back as he felt his way over to her. She placed the candle in his hand, then fumbled for her tinder kit again and lit the candle. 

A shiver of weak orange light filled the small space, tinting the blood on Nil’s face with a ghoulish black tinge. Aloy’s heart skipped a painful beat. No matter how many times she’d seen him injured, the sight of Nil’s blood never failed to squeeze the breath from her lungs. “Nil…” she breathed, and pushed him down into a kneeling position so she could examine his split lip. 

Nil smiled at her, unconcerned about his minor wound. “Very clever, Suntress. I liked your use of the Tenakth’s most vile malediction. It was perfectly placed, like an arrow straight to the heart.”

Aloy managed to smile at him as she delicately tilted his chin up so she could look at his lip. “All thanks to you,” she said. “Your last words to Ullia stuck in my head.” Her heart was thumping with delayed fear; not of Merat, but for Nil. Seeing him held down like that, a spear at his throat, blood dripping from his lips… 

Aloy cupped his face in her trembling hands. “That was too close,” she told him shakily. “She would have killed you…” 

_I could have lost you,_ she thought with a surge of retrospective panic. If he’d been taken from her now, after all they’d gone through together and all they’d suffered while apart, to be separated by that fine veil of death from which there was no return… 

The idea of losing him for good squeezed the air from her lungs, and she took a panicked little breath as she slid her fingers into his hair. Her eyes were locked on Nil’s, and his face, handsome but bloodied, was a mere inch away from hers, his silver gaze on her face was intense and serious. 

There was no thought. There was only feeling: fear, relief, desperation, _love_. Suddenly Aloy was straddling his hips, his hands gripping her waist, her arms around his neck, his lips devouring hers. 

Aloy soaked in the soothing heat of Nil’s tongue in her mouth, the reassuring roughness of his palms as they encircled her waist then slid up her back beneath her cropped silk blouse. Even the metallic hint of blood in his kiss was something to savour, a heady confirmation of the life pounding through his veins. 

With every stroke of his tongue against hers, the tension in her chest loosened and relaxed, and relief began to war with desire at the apex of her thighs. Aloy buried her fingers in his hair and dug her nails into his neck. When he purred out a dark little laugh at the bite of her nails, the lust in her core and the heavy emotion in her chest throbbed in time with his laughter. 

She loved Nil so much it almost hurt. Their relationship had its flaws, but Aloy was determined to smooth them out. They would fix it. They had to. There was no way she could continue to be without him. 

Nil broke from their kiss suddenly and gently pulled the hair at the base of her neck, exposing her throat to his roving lips, and Aloy gasped in excitement as his other hand tilted her hips closer to the hardness between his legs. _All-Mother’s mercy,_ she thought feverishly. She’d been missing this so badly, wanting this, wanting _him_.

But it wasn’t right. The timing, the place, her unfinished business with Avad, this new war with the Tenakth - it wasn’t the right time. But more importantly, Aloy couldn’t just let herself and Nil fall back into old patterns. There were still problems they needed to sort out. She needed to do things _right_ this time.

“Nil, wait,” Aloy gasped, even as her hips undulated helplessly against his. “Wait…”

Nil growled against her skin, then traced her ear delicately with his tongue. “Why?” he whispered. 

Aloy shivered as desire rippled over her skin, but she forced herself to pull away from the seduction of his mouth. “Not here. Not like this,” she panted. She slid her hands from his neck down to his smooth, hard chest, then half-heartedly pushed at his chest. 

Nil growled again, a rough sound of frustration, then with extreme reluctance he slid her off his lap so they were kneeling on the ground facing each other. He twined his hand in her hair and rested his forehead against hers, breathing hard. 

“You’re right,” he finally conceded, though his voice was strained with lust. “Not here. I need furniture and a lot more air to do what I want to do with you.”

Aloy gave a breathless little laugh as his words sent a fresh bolt of lust through her belly. Then, by unspoken mutual agreement, she and Nil shuffled away from each other to sit against opposite walls of the bunker. 

Aloy tried to calm her breathing and the raging torrent of lust still pounding through her body, but it was so _difficult_ when Nil continued to stare at her like a starving man denied a meal of roast boar. Eventually she laughed, still giddy with desire, and closed her eyes, letting her head fall back against the wall. They both sat in warm silence for a while. 

“We should probably stay here for a few hours, wait out the Tenakth who were chasing us,” she suggested quietly after some time. “Does it makes sense to sneak our way back to Greenstone?”

Nil nodded. “Yes. If they see us in the open, they’ll kill us on the spot. Didn’t come this far to die now, Suntress.”

She opened her eyes and gave him a half-smile. Then she settled into a cross-legged position. “Nil… I’m sorry that you didn’t get to kill Merat.” 

Now that the urgency of the situation had passed, Aloy realized that he probably could have done it before they fled the cabin. Nil was fast; he could have caught Merat by surprise. A pang of regret and _what-could-have-been_ hit her as she realized that the battle to come could have been stopped if she’d just paused long enough for Nil to finish Merat.

But again, Nil seemed to read her thoughts. He shook his head. “Merat isn’t like a simple Carja soldier, Suntress. She wouldn’t be an easy kill, even weakened by your arrow. And her growing horde surrounded us on all sides. The escape was necessary.” He heaved a dramatic sigh. “I hate to run from a good fight, but the odds weren’t in our favour.”

Then he gave her a bright smile. “Besides, I’ll get my chance. The Carja _have_ to go to war with the Tenakth now. That’s exciting. The backdrop of battle will add a thrilling sense of drama to Merat’s death when I finally hand it to her.”

Aloy rolled her eyes. Trust him to see the bright side of a bloody war. “You’re disgusting,” she said, with an affectionate smile.

Nil’s silvery eyes glittered with amusement. He pushed off of the wall and slowly crawled towards her, and Aloy breathlessly welcomed his touch as he curved his fingers around the back of her neck, his thumb stroking her cheek. “You know you love it,” he whispered, his lips a hairsbreadth from her own.

Aloy tilted her chin up to accept one more slow, tender kiss. Who was she to deny the obvious truth?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three things:
> 
> 1\. Credit to J. K. Rowling, since that one line about the veil of death was absolutely inspired by Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. *sobs quietly*  
> 2\. In case anyone is wondering: No, Aloy and Nil don’t have implicit sex in the bunker at the end of this chapter. Kissies only. So self-control! Such discipline! O_o  
> 3\. The next update may not be for a couple days; the next chapters will be longer and might take a bit of extra time to iron out. Stick with me! <3


	11. Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy and Nil return to Meridian to share their news of the Tenakth threat, and Aloy takes some decisive steps to setting things right with the men in her life. 
> 
> A/N: Very long chapter, with NSFW smut and a lot of feelings. Too many feelings? Ughhhh there are never too many feelings with Niloy... <3

The following morning saw Nil and Suntress travelling back to the Sundom as quickly as their Broadheads could carry them, stopping only to eat and to sleep for a few short hours each night. They arrived in Meridian early on their fifth day of travel and went straight to the palace. As they entered the Sun-King’s court, Nil could see Avad, Erend, and Marad conferring in Avad’s pagoda. 

Erend was the first to spot them. “Aloy!” he bellowed, then shoved past Marad and thundered towards them, grabbing Suntress in a crushing hug that made her wheeze with laughter. Then, to Nil’s utter surprise, Erend slapped Nil on the shoulder in comradely manner. “You’re back, both of you! Fire and spit, we were worried…” 

Nil stood in silent watchfulness as Suntress squeezed Erend’s arm fondly, then nodded politely to Vanasha and Uthid as they hurried over from the casual seating area. 

Then suddenly Avad was there. His face was drawn with anxiety as he pushed his way past Erend and clasped Suntress’s arms in worry, then cupped her face in his hands. Nil shifted restlessly, not liking Avad’s touch on Suntress’s skin, but he remained silent. 

“Aloy. By the Sun…” Avad blew out a shaky breath. “The guards from Greenstone passed on your message. In another day, if you hadn’t shown up, we… I thought…” 

Suntress gently but firmly removed Avad’s hands from her face. “I’m fine. We’re both fine,” she assured him briskly. “But we need to have a council meeting right away. The situation with the Tenakth has… escalated.” She looked at Nil, and he nodded confirmation. 

Avad gave Nil a quick nod of greeting, then gestured towards the council room. “Of course, yes. Luckily we’re all here already.” They all adjourned to the council room, and Suntress wasted no time filling them in on everything they’d learned, including Merat’s intention to directly assault the Sundom if her attack on the Utaru was successful. During her recounting, Suntress addressed Nil frequently for further details or to confirm the accuracy of what she said, which surprised him. 

After she finished describing the debacle in Merat’s cabin, Uthid leaned forward, his palms flat on the table. “That’s unfortunate that the negotiation didn’t pan out. What should we expect now that the Tenakth leader is wounded? Her warriors may wish revenge for her injury, will they not?”

Suntress turned to him expectantly. “Nil?”

Nil folded his arms. “No. Injury is a weakness. Aloy and I were outnumbered, three against two. It should have been easy for Merat to eliminate us, but we killed her two guards-” 

“ _You_ killed them,” Suntress interjected proudly as she gazed up at him. 

He gave her a little half-smile. “... and Aloy wounded her with an arrow to the chest. That will be considered a mark of shame. She’ll probably have to fight some of her own best warriors to prove herself powerful enough to continue leading the horde. Strength only follows strength.”

The rest of the council relaxed visibly at this. “So that gives us what, an extra day to prepare?” Erend asked. 

Nil nodded. “Maybe more, depending on how much Merat has to prove herself.” He grinned proudly at Suntress. “Aloy shot her at close range. It was a beautiful wound to witness.” 

“What are you talking about? I missed. Should have gotten her in the throat,” Suntress muttered, but her ears were bright red. Nil felt a rush of affection at her embarrassment. 

Then Avad spoke. “Is there anything else you can tell us about when we can anticipate the horde to move on the Utaru? How many days will we have to prepare the army?”

Nil shrugged casually. “Hard to say, really. Maybe three? Merat said the hundred-some-odd warriors at her camp were just a fraction of what she was expecting, but beyond that…” He shrugged again. It made no difference to him. Whether the opposing army was a hundred or a thousand, Nil would wade in with the same bloodthirsty enthusiasm as he always did.

“Your Radiance, if I may,” Marad interjected, “We have yet to negotiate directly with a political representative among the Utaru. It would be in our best interests to formalize our alliance before sending our army south.”

Suntress pounded her fist on the table, making Vanasha and Erend jump. She glared at Marad. “You weren’t there,” she said, her voice intense and dangerous. “You didn’t see what we saw. Innocent people killed and injured, families torn apart. There is _no time to waste_.” She looked at Avad. “We spoke to Governer Ilya of the Utaru. Ilya said that it is the Carja’s duty as decent human beings to provide assistance, if that is how you wish your tribe to be seen.” She paused, and her implacable gaze slid back to Marad’s face. “They _will_ honour your assistance with an alliance. But it would be callous and inhumane to delay for the sake of politics.” She spat the last word like it was a filthy curse. 

Nil smirked and raised one eyebrow at Marad, even as an untimely wave of lust made his cock twitch. By the Sun, he loved it when his Suntress was authoritative. It reminded him of other times when he encouraged her to be dominant… 

“Aloy is right,” Avad said firmly, distracting Nil from his fantasies. Avad was staring regally at Marad. “We must get the army on their way as soon as possible. Erend, notify the Vanguard; you and your warriors will remain here. You’ll need to focus on shoring up Meridian’s defences in case the worst comes to pass with the Tenakth horde.” Marad nodded his head once with dignified deference, and Erend nodded with determination. 

Nil looked at Avad. “It won’t. If we take the fight to the south, we’ll cut Merat down, and the whole horde will fall apart. I guarantee it.” 

Avad nodded graciously to him. “I don’t doubt your assessment, Nil, but if Aloy has taught us anything, it’s that we must be prepared for the unexpected.” 

“Marad,” Aloy said, and her voice was calm and bland again, “An Utaru representative is expected within the next two days. You'll likely be able to formalize your alliance before the army heads south.” 

Marad gave her a small smile and a half-bow. “Thank you, Aloy. That is excellent news.” 

Nil leaned down to Suntress. “You should have let him squirm like a skewered bandit,” he muttered in her ear, and she elbowed him lightly in the abdomen. “Behave,” she whispered back, but she was smirking slightly. 

Nil smirked as well, then looked up to find Avad’s eyes on them. Avad swallowed visibly, then turned to Uthid. “Uthid, let us go speak with the other military commanders. Marad, Vanasha, please begin drawing up our talking points for the eventual arrival of the Utaru representative. Erend, let me know if the Vanguard require anything.” Then he turned to Aloy and Nil again. “Aloy, Nil… I am eternally grateful for your help in this matter, and that you have returned safely to the Sundom. May I ask you to remain with us until this conflict-”

“I’m going back to Plainsong with the army,” Nil interrupted. “I didn’t get my kill.” 

Suntress snorted a laugh, and Nil felt light-headed for a moment, warmed from the inside from the sound of her mirth. He turned to her. “You’re coming with me, aren’t you? I’ll need a good partner to share the bloodshed.”

Suntress nodded. “Of course I’m coming.”

To Nil’s disgust, Vanasha turned to Avad and piped up. “I’d like to join the army as well, to fight alongside Aloy and Nil. After the Utaru negotiations, of course.”

Avad nodded. “Certainly. Thank you, Vanasha. We should be so lucky as to have your combined combat expertise.” Then his eyes slid back to Suntress. “I will speak with you later,” he said softly, ostensibly to all three of them, but Nil could tell he was really talking to Suntress. She seemed to know as well, as she gave him a tiny nod, and he departed. 

Nil eyed Vanasha with annoyance. All the other council members had left. _Why_ was she still here? “Coming to fight the Tenakth horde, Vanasha? You must have a death wish. I can help you with that; no need to come all the way south.” 

Vanasha snorted. “Very nice, Pet Prince. But this time-” 

“Don't _call_ him that,” Suntress snapped. She was glaring at Vanasha with her fists clenched, and Nil felt a vindictive pleasure at the wary look on Vanasha’s face as she gazed at the lightning snapping from Suntress's eyes.

Then Nil heaved a little internal sigh. He didn't like Vanasha, but Suntress usually did. And Nil could admit that Vanasha, with her intelligence and alleged charm, was a useful ally for Suntress. It wouldn't serve Suntress’s interests to be at odds with the clever Carja woman. Besides, Nil had never given a shit what Vanasha thought of him. “I don't mind,” he said. 

“Well, I do! She should spend some time getting to know you instead of assuming that she knows anything about you.” Suntress was glaring at Vanasha as she said this. Then she spun towards Nil. “And you! Ease up on the death threats, okay? Only make them if Vanasha _really_ deserves it.” Suntress gave Vanasha another forbidding glance, but Nil could see the hint of a smirk on her lips. 

Then she looked back up at him. “I have to run some errands.” Then she lowered her voice. “And… I have to speak to Avad.” Her face was serious, but her eyes were warm and bright, and a wild joy took flight in Nil’s chest. If he wasn’t mistaken, this meant he wouldn’t have to wait much longer for her. 

“I’ll find you later?” she murmured, and Nil nodded agreement. Did she even need to ask? 

Suntress smiled at him, then nodded briskly to Vanasha. “Vanasha. I’ll speak with you later as well.” 

“Aloy…” Vanasha said, and Nil could detect a pitiful note of pleading in her voice. Suntress shook her head. “Later,” she said firmly, then ran off towards the market. 

Nil smirked and turned to leave. He would go find Taran; he suspected that Suntress would appreciate the Tenakth warrior’s skills in the battle to come. But before he could step away, Vanasha spoke. “Nil, can we… talk for a second?”

Her words sounded like they were being dragged reluctantly from her stomach by a fishhook, and though her discomfort pleased him, he really didn't want to talk to her. Very reluctantly, he turned towards her and raised one eyebrow. 

Her arms were folded tightly, her lips pursed. Nil stared at her expectantly, his impatience rising with every moment. Then finally she spoke. “You don’t like me. And I don’t like you. But… for Aloy’s sake…” Vanasha shifted her weight uncomfortably and rolled her eyes. “I suppose… I’m willing to make an effort. If you are.” 

Nil frowned. “An effort at what?” At talking to her more? He _really_ wasn't interested. She talked too much as it was.

Vanasha raised one eyebrow, and her lips twitched slightly. “An effort at tolerating each other, you royal pain.” She unfolded her arms and looked at him pensively. “Why _do_ you dislike me so much?” she asked. 

This was a question Nil could easily answer. “You took advantage of Aloy from the moment you met her. Always asking favours, getting in the way of her goals. _And_ ,” he added spitefully, “you never stop talking. Your mouth is always running, like the gushing of vile fluids from a severed bowel. It never ceases.” 

“That’s it?” Vanasha said incredulously. “That was one time! Fine, two times. And that was over two years ago. You certainly know how to hold a grudge.” She shook her head in disbelief. Unfortunately, it seemed that she wasn’t concerned about the talking-too-much part of his complaint. 

Nil shifted his weight impatiently. He’d had quite enough of this conversation now, but Vanasha was still gazing at him thoughtfully, her arms folded again. 

He sighed. “Why do you dislike me?” he asked in a flat voice. He really didn’t care, but he supposed it was only polite to ask. 

She raised her eyebrows. “Aside from the fact that you’re a creep who loves killing people?” 

Nil shrugged. He wasn’t ashamed of who he was. Then Vanasha gazed at him more seriously. “Honestly? You hurt Aloy. I don’t want to see that happen again.” 

Nil glanced at her in surprise. This was actually something he could agree with. “I won’t,” he said confidently. “I’ll follow her without complaint.” If the choice was between doing what Suntress wanted, or doing what _he_ wanted without her, the answer was obvious. 

But Vanasha looked at him like he was stupid. “Are you really that thick? That's how the problem arose in the first place. Nobody should just follow their partner without question. Don’t pretend you weren’t unhappy doing what Aloy wanted all the time. She told me all about it. You made her responsible for your happiness, Nil. That little huntress has too many damn responsibilities as it is; she takes on too much already, and _you_ put everything on her.”

Nil stared at her. Her words made him uncomfortable; they were similar to what Suntress had said when they’d argued during their journey to Plainsong. _You were miserable, Nil. I could see it every damn day. And you were making me miserable._ Was it possible that Vanasha was… _urgh_ …correct? Right now, all he wanted was to be with Suntress. But what if he get bored again? What would he do? Would she send him away again?

A wriggle of anxiety writhed in his chest, and he buried it under a blanket of sarcasm. “Your sage advice is really bursting forth like maggots from a bloated corpse today. Don’t you have anything better to do than bother me with your incessant talk?” 

To his surprise, she burst out laughing. “How very colourful,” she retorted, then eyed him speculatively for a moment before speaking again. “I must go meet Marad, start planning for these negotiations with the Utaru. You should come. You’re the one who’s met them, after all. Your insight would be helpful.”

 _Not a chance,_ Nil thought. He’d had enough of Vanasha for one day. Besides, he wanted to speak with Taran. But before he could speak, a little voice in Nil’s head stopped him. Vanasha was… trying to get along. She was making an effort. And she had said it would make things easier for Suntress... “All right,” Nil said grudgingly. 

Vanasha smiled at him, and for the first time that Nil could remember, her smile wasn’t sharp as knives. “Good. Let's go. Marad’s probably missing my scintillating charm by now.” 

****************

That evening, Aloy sat quietly at the balcony in her small suite in the palace, waiting for Avad. She’d sent a messenger to him earlier this afternoon, asking him to meet her here.

She didn’t have to wait long for the soft knock at the door that heralded his arrival. Quickly Aloy rose and opened the door, and Avad stepped inside, his forehead already lined with unhappiness. 

His face looked resigned, and Aloy felt a pang of sympathy for him, but that wouldn’t stop her from doing what needed to be done - what she should have done weeks ago. Tentatively they sat across from each other at the small table. 

Aloy didn’t hesitate. “Avad, I have to end our liaison. I’m sorry, but…” 

Avad shook his head. “I should have known,” he said softly, and his sad brown eyes brought a lump to Aloy’s throat. “From the moment he set foot in Meridian, I should have…” He paused, then rubbed a hand over his face. “Did something… happen while you were travelling together?”

Aloy swallowed her guilt before replying. “Yes. There was a kiss.” She declined to tell Avad how she and Nil had slept curled in each other’s arms by the fire each night during the journey back to Meridian, their hearts beating together like two halves a single being. Some things didn’t need to be shared. 

Aloy reached across the table and gently took Avad’s hand. “Avad, I am… truly sorry. But you and I would never have worked out. You need a true partner, someone who can stand in Meridian by your side.” _Someone like Ersa,_ she thought sadly. 

Avad gave her a faint smile that somehow made him look even more melancholy. “That's kind of you to say, Aloy, but please. We both know that's not the real reason for this.” He sighed, then gently squeezed her fingers. “I should have known better,” he repeated softly. “Of course you still love Nil. After all, I…” His voice caught and he bowed his head, and Aloy’s heart seized with painful empathy. 

“You still love Ersa,” she murmured gently, and Avad nodded, then took his hand back from her to cover his eyes. “I wish I didn’t,” he muttered, and rubbed his hands roughly over his face.

With perfect clarity, Aloy realized then what she and Avad had always been from the start: two lonely people looking to fill the chasm in their hearts where the person they really loved was missing. But she was so much luckier than Avad. She had a second chance waiting just around the corner. 

On impulse, Aloy rose from her chair and rounded the table to hug Avad tightly around the shoulders. “Don’t say that,” she whispered to him. “You don’t mean it. Don’t regret the time you had with Ersa. She may be gone, but she’ll always be your strength. Always.” _Just like Rost and Elisabet are mine,_ she thought, with a pang of grief. “Don’t ever regret that, Avad.” 

Avad didn’t reply; Aloy could feel him shaking under her embrace, and she continued to hold him tightly until his shoulders relaxed. 

Eventually he took a deep breath and squeezed her forearm gently. Aloy pulled away and slowly returned to her chair to face him, and she was relieved to find a small smile on his face, albeit a watery one. “Your wisdom never ceases to impress, Aloy,” he said gently. Then with an obvious effort, he straightened his posture and raised his chin, his kingly manner restored. “Despite everything that has… passed between us, will you continue to offer me your wisdom and advice? I would hate to think this would interfere with the good we can achieve together, with you on my council.” He smiled tentatively at her.

Aloy smiled back. “Of course. Besides, we both know Marad would be devastated if I left the council. I couldn’t do that to him.” Avad chuckled wryly, and for the first time in months - in years, really - Aloy felt fully relaxed around him. She couldn’t help but think how their seamless transition from lovers to friends just went to show that they were never meant to be together, not really. 

And now, now that things were sorted out with Avad, all she wanted was to be in the arms of the one she was meant for all this time. 

******************

“Nil.”

Nil turned his head to look down at Suntress as she joined him at the balustrade overlooking the Maizelands. “Suntress,” he greeted her, and she smiled up at him, her eyes brilliant in the evening sun. 

Then she dropped her gaze shyly and bit her lip. She lifted her hand to roll one of the beads from her braids between her fingers, and Nil realized she was nervous. He gazed intently at her, anticipation and hope rising in his chest as he waited for her to speak again.

“I ended things with Avad,” she blurted suddenly. She lifted her eyes again to Nil’s, and a jolt of excitement jumped in his belly at the heat and emotion in her gaze. 

She took a deep breath, her brilliant gold-and-green eyes intense on his. “Nil… I want to try again with you. I want us to have a second chance.” 

A shining happiness lit the horizon of Nil’s mind, but he held it at bay. He reached out and cradled her cheek in his hand. “Are you certain?” he said. “I need you to be certain.” Now that she was here, telling him what he’d been hoping and wishing for her to say, he couldn’t bear the idea of her being at all unsure. 

She gave a shaky little laugh and reached up to hold his hand against her cheek. “Nil, the only thing I'm sure of is that I love you. I want… I _need_ to be with you. But honestly... I'm scared. I'm scared the same problems will happen as before. I don’t know yet how we can stop that from happening.” She gazed guilelessly up at him, and he could see her anxiety in the angle of her eyebrows, despite the heat of her gaze. 

But Nil could barely concentrate on anything beyond _I love you. I need to be with you._ Never had those words from her lips been so sweet as in this moment, when Nil had been waiting for what felt like forever for her to admit what he knew to be true. It felt like there was a lantern inside of him, filling him with light and warmth, ready to lift him into the heights of happiness.

He stepped closer to her and slid his hand gently around to cradle the nape of her neck. “Don’t be scared,” he assured her. “We both want the same thing. You have nothing to be afraid of.” 

Suntress’s body curved inexorably towards his, like a willow tree bending with the wind. She curled her fists against his abdomen and tilted her chin up to look at him. “It’s not that simple,” she insisted. “We can’t just go back to doing the same thing we did before. It wasn’t… it…” 

Her words trailed off and she gave a tiny gasp; Nil was trailing his lips delicately along her cheekbone to her temple, and then to her ear. “Come to my room,” he whispered huskily. 

Suntress’s eyes fluttered shut. Her breath hitched in her throat, and she pressed herself more firmly against his chest. “Nil… we should really… figure stuff out,” she murmured vaguely, then she gave a tiny moan as Nil placed a delicate kiss just below her ear. 

Another kiss, just below the first, then a third along the sweet path outlined by the tendon in her neck. “And we will,” he murmured against the softness of her skin. “Later. Right now, just come with me.”

Now that she’d told him she loved him, that they were going to be together again, all Nil wanted was for them to join together in the best way they knew how. He was going to show her just how much he’d missed every fucking inch of her. He just needed to her to say yes. 

She swallowed hard then opened her eyes, and Nil felt a surge of triumph: her gaze was incandescent with desire, and there wasn’t even a hint of uncertainty in her face. Finally she spoke. “Yes. Let’s go,” she whispered.

****************

Aloy eagerly followed Nil back to his guest room in the palace without speaking, their fingers laced together tightly. Anticipation was simmering to a wanton boil in her blood. She knew that she and Nil had things they needed to talk about, but tonight, Aloy didn’t care. 

Tonight, she was going to finally have what she’d been missing for so long. She knew Nil, knew what he was capable of, and she knew he was going to fill the emptiness in her core in more ways than one. 

He tugged her into his room and shut the door behind them. Then, before Aloy could do more than turn to face him, he pushed her back against the door with one hot hand against her hip and crowded her with his body. Then the heat of his mouth was upon hers, and a bloom of wild desire unfurled into pulsing life in her body. 

She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, pulling him close and pressing herself desperately against him as she savoured the firm pressure of his lips and the hot stroke of his tongue against hers. 

Then suddenly Nil broke their kiss and tilted her head back with a gentle hand at her throat. “A Stormbird can’t be owned,” he growled roughly in her ear, “but here, tonight, you’re mine. Do you agree?” 

A bone-melting surge of excitement washed over her at his possessive words and his possessive hand at her throat, and instantly she was wet and ready for him. “Yes,” Aloy gasped. Her hands flew down to tug impatiently at his belt buckle. 

But with a soft little laugh, Nil took her hands in his and pulled them away from his belt. He pressed her hands back against the door, and Aloy whined in frustration at his self-control. How could he be taking things so slow when she was so desperate to be naked and pressed against him?

“Take off your clothes,” he whispered to her, then released her hands to deftly remove her belt pouch. Aloy impatiently unstrapped her vest and ripped it off, then tugged her cropped blouse over her head while Nil slipped off her tassets. Hastily Aloy pushed him away slightly so she could pull off her sandals, then Nil’s hands were at the laces of her leggings, skilfully tugging them loose so he could shove her leggings down. 

As soon as Aloy kicked her leggings away, Nil grabbed her hips and swiftly turned her so she was facing the door. Then he lifted her hands and pressed her palms against the door, his own palms flush to the backs of her hands. A moment later, the rigid bulge of his manhood was teasing her bottom through the silk of his pants. 

Aloy cried out involuntarily at the delicious teasing rub of his cock against her backside. She bucked back against him instinctively, trying to gain more friction from the exquisite hardness between his legs, but his firm grip on her hands limited the degree to which she could move. “Nil,” she panted, and arched her back pleadingly to coax him closer. “Give me more!”

Nil pressed the length of his clothed body against her back, and the friction of his armour against her nakedness sent a thrill along her skin. He nipped her earlobe, then growled against her ear. “What makes you think you’re in charge right now?” 

A sledgehammer of pure lust slammed through her body at the dark, possessive tone of his voice. _Fire and spit and blood, this is what I’ve been missing,_ she thought deliriously. This was something only Nil could give her, and that she _never_ wanted from anyone else: to let go of everything, to cede control, to give herself over to someone who knew exactly what they were doing. 

“Keep your hands on the door. Don’t move,” he growled, then he stepped away from her. She heard the tantalizing sounds of his clothing rustling and hitting the floor, and eagerly she looked over her shoulder. 

Another firebomb of lust ignited in her stomach as Nil dropped his silk pants and his erection sprang free. He lifted his eyes, then raised one eyebrow as he caught her gaze. “I don’t think I said you could look,” he told her matter-of-factly. He stepped close to her again and placed his left hand on her hip, and with his right hand he pushed her jaw to make her face the door again, then smoothed his fingers slowly back along her neck and over her shoulder blade. 

Nil’s teeth grazed her shoulder blade in the wake of his fingers, and Aloy closed her eyes and bit her lip as she savoured the _rightness_ of his hands and his mouth on her bare skin. His right hand slid down her back, then along her ribs to trace the underside of her breast with excruciating slowness. 

Aloy gasped as his thumb slid over the hardness of her nipple, and she bucked back again only to find resistance from Nil’s implacable left hand on her hip. Then suddenly his face was pressed against the nape of her neck. “Hmmm,” he growled, a happy little sound, and through the storm of lust raging in her body, Aloy smiled. He sounded just as happy as she felt right now. 

“I’m going to touch every inch of your skin before this night is through,” he promised, and Aloy nodded in furious agreement with this proclamation. Then he continued to make good on his promise, smoothing his hot palm over her right breast, then her left, then rolling her left nipple between his fingers gently. Meanwhile, his left hand slid down her hip and along the length of her thigh, his fingers gentle and exploratory as they slid around to the front of her thigh and up. 

Aloy inhaled sharply and bucked her hips again as Nil’s thumb grazed the curls at the apex of her thighs. “Goddess,” she gasped, then gasped more breathlessly still as the hardness of his shaft suddenly slid between her legs to tease at the moisture of her cleft. 

Nil hissed in a sharp breath through his teeth, and the fingers of his right hand tightened to a delicious painful pressure on her nipple as he rocked himself teasingly between her legs. Aloy mewled with desire, unable to stop herself from thrusting back towards him. The delicious friction of his cock _there_ , so close to filling the aching emptiness inside of her, was almost more than she could bear. 

Then suddenly he pulled away, and his left hand was back on her hip while the clever fingers of his right hand stroked along the length of her labia. Aloy moaned, her head falling back in ecstasy as he gently slid his fingers over her pussy, spreading her heat and moisture before swirling gently over her clit. 

Then Nil fisted his left hand in her hair and gently pulled her head to the side. “Suntress, I have dreamed about this for _months_ ,” he hissed in her ear. “The idea of your heat on my fingers and your taste on my tongue has kept me awake at night. And now they’re mine.” 

“Yes,” Aloy panted eagerly, then let out another moan of pleasure as his fingers continued to swirl over her clit with the perfect rhythm and pressure, pushing her easily and swiftly toward the edge of her climax. 

Nil growled, then suddenly he dropped to his knees behind her. The fingers of his right hand continued their beautiful circular rhythm, but with his left hand, he pushed at her inner thigh. “Spread,” he commanded. 

Immediately Aloy obeyed, spreading her legs and arching her back as she braced her weight more firmly on her palms on the door. If he was going to do what she hoped…

A moment later, her wish came true: Nil pushed her thighs apart a bit more, then angled his head to the side and licked her pussy from behind, his tongue taking over seamlessly where his fingers had left off. Aloy gave a sob of pleasure and leaned her forehead against the door; she’d always been a sucker for the feel of Nil’s mouth on that most intimate part of her, and he had the most talented tongue… 

Nil’s tongue alternated between sliding along the length of her cleft and swirling over the bud of her pleasure, and within mere moments - almost too soon, _dammit_ , she was enjoying this! - his skilfull lapping pushed her over the edge of her climax. Aloy gave a wild cry of pleasure and fisted her hands in her hair as she leaned her elbows against the door for support, and the sharp pain of her fingers pulling at her own hair only served to enhance her ecstasy. 

She was still twitching with the aftershocks of her orgasm when Nil stood up abruptly. Then his left hand was on her hip again, his cock was nudging firmly at her slick folds, and Aloy arched pliantly again, more than ready to take him. 

Then suddenly he was inside of her, his hard length filling her in one long, swift stroke, and Aloy was complete. Lights were bursting behind her closed eyelids, and the depth of his cock inside of her was like stretching a muscle she hadn’t known was cramped; she felt soothed and stimulated at the same time, and as always with Nil, she immediately wanted _more_. 

Eagerly she thrust back against him, forgetting that he had wanted to be in control, and to her delight he matched her rhythm instantly, the firm grip of his hands on her hips guiding her smoothly to the sweet hard target between his legs. 

But then, abruptly, Nil stopped their delicious rhythm and pulled out of her. “Nil!” Aloy gasped, almost angry at him; how _dare_ he stop now, when they’d both been waiting for so long? She whirled to face him, ready to demand her satisfaction, but he swiftly pressed her back against the door again and grasped her face in his hands. 

He was breathing hard as he pressed his forehead to hers, then he stroked his thumbs against her cheekbones. “Easy, Suntress. I don’t want to rush,” he panted. 

Aloy’s irritation immediately melted and was replaced with an aching tenderness. He really was savouring their reunion. Her chest throbbed suddenly with unbearable love, and Aloy wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him flush to her body to share in his sweat and heat as she tilted her chin up entreatingly for his kiss. 

Slowly Nil lowered his face and tasted her lips so delicately that it brought a sudden burn of tears to her eyes. His lips nipped gently at hers before he traced her lower lip gently with his tongue. Then he slid his hands reverently into her hair while sliding his tongue reverently into her mouth. The sweet, gentle stroke of his tongue against hers was mesmerizing, and Aloy soon felt dreamy with relaxation and desire, completely and happily at Nil’s mercy. 

Without breaking their kiss, he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up, then carried her over to the bed. He didn’t set her down even when they reached the bed; he held her tight against his body with one arm firmly wrapped around her waist and crawled onto the bed, pulling her onto the bed beneath him. When Nil finally laid her down, it was slowly and gently, like he was handling a finely made metalwork. Once Aloy was flat on her back, he sat back on his knees, his silver eyes glowing brightly in the torchlight as they roved slowly over her body like he was reacquainting himself with her every freckle and scar. 

Aloy stared up at his beautiful face in turn, drinking in the forbidding slashes of his eyebrows and the sculpted planes of his cheekbones as thirstily as if she’d been wandering through the desert. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest, causing an unbearably sweet ache that she only ever associated with the most perfect moments with this man. When Nil’s eyes finally fell on her face, he smiled slowly at her, and his expression was of such perfect, utter happiness that Aloy knew her face must match his own. 

A sudden tear of joy trickled from the corner of her eye along her temple, but she ignored it. “Come here,” she said huskily, and Nil’s eyes glinted affectionately at her use of his customary phrase. He lowered himself over her, bracing his weight on one hand while his other hand smoothed the tear from her face, then cupped the back of her head. Aloy wrapped her arms around his neck and one leg over his hip, then slid one hand down to cradle his face. 

“I love you so fucking much,” she whispered, her fingers stroking lightly over his cheek and chin. Aloy rarely ever used Nil’s favoured curseword, but she needed him to know how serious she was, and she knew he’d understand how much she meant it if she used his own words. 

A smile of absolute joy lit Nil’s face, and his eyes glittered in the torchlight. He kissed her lips gently once, then twice, then trailed his lips over her cheekbone to her ear. “You’re the perfect other half of my heart,” he whispered to her. “Without you, the blood pumps black and cold through my veins. You’re the light that warms me, Suntress. I have no need for the sun as long as I have you.” 

Aloy sobbed out a laugh, and another bittersweet tear of happiness trailed along her temple. It was so perfectly _Nil_ that his words of love put hers to utter shame while still being laced with bloody poetry. Nil kissed her tears away, then slowly reached down between their bodies and guided his hardness towards the welcoming heat of her entrance. 

Nil slid his manhood inside of her reverently, the slow and sinuous thrusting of his hips bringing his chest flush to hers, and Aloy tightened her leg around his hip to pull him deeper still. The rhythm of their bodies this time was still perfect, but slow and tender, setting up an unbearably exquisite simmer deep in Aloy’s abdomen.

If she’d thought she was complete before when Nil first thrust into her, it was nothing to how she felt now. _This_ was home. Underneath Nil’s body, with the heat of his skin warming her, his reassuring weight grounding her, his beautiful hardness filling her up, she was home and whole again. She wrapped her arms more tightly around his neck as he lovingly thrust into her, wanting desperately to keep him close. 

Slowly, inexorably, the heat in her core began to boil, and she knew Nil’s pleasure was building too; his breathing in her ear was becoming ragged, his thrusting becoming faster, and Aloy lifted her hips more frantically to match him. His fingers in her hair tightened, and the mild pain of his pulling made her gasp with heightened pleasure. Soon he was slamming his cock into her, and every hard thrust dragged a gasp of bliss from her throat. 

Lost in the throes of pleasure, she dragged her nails _hard_ along his shoulders, and Nil hissed in pain, then laughed darkly. “Out for blood again, Suntress?” he gritted. He suddenly stopped thrusting, then pulled her arms from around his neck and slammed her hands over her head onto the mattress, his hands gripping her wrists tightly. 

Aloy gasped. Somehow, her already-unbearable lust flared higher still at the return of his dominance, and she writhed beneath him with a mewl of distress, wanting him to resume his fast and hard rhythm. 

Nil’s grip on her wrists was implacable, and his slow, teasing thrusting was torture. Aloy whimpered and panted as he filled her completely, then slowly pulled out of her. “Nil! Please!” she cried, knowing that he wanted her to beg. He was the only person who ever had the privilege of hearing a word of pleading fall from Aloy’s lips. 

He stopped with the head of his cock just outside of her entrance. “Please what?” he purred. 

Aloy strained against his grip and arched helplessly towards him. “Fuck me!” she screamed. 

Nil laughed, then slammed his cock deep into her, dragging a guttural cry from her throat. His hips moved against hers with the perfect driving rhythm of an Oseram piston, and Aloy could barely catch her breath as she pulled his hips against hers with the leverage of her leg around his hip. 

When the building of her pleasure was almost overwhelmingly acute, Nil suddenly held fast with his cock deep inside of her and ground his pubic bone slowly against hers, rubbing her clit with a perfect indirect rhythm. Aloy moaned and shuddered convulsively. “Nil, _yes!_ ” she panted, and she spread the leg that wasn’t hooked over his hip even wider to give him closer access. 

The twofold pleasure from his cock inside of her and his sweet pressure on her clit continued to build, and within moments Aloy found her rapture, with all the muscles in her body suddenly contracting in a series of delicious spasms. For the second time that night, stars burst behind her eyelids, and she vaguely felt her own nails biting into her palms as she cried out her pleasure. 

Nil gasped at the contractions of her inner walls, and his thrusting picked up again in a furious frenzy of speed that prolonged the tingling ecstasy of Aloy’s orgasm. Moments later, he groaned in completion and captured her lips in a fierce kiss as he came, then finally released his grip on her wrists. Immediately Aloy wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting to keep him close.

As their hearts both started to slow, Aloy kept her arms twined around Nil’s neck, wanting to memorize the reassuring weight of his body against hers and the sweet saltiness of his skin against her lips. His face was tucked against the crook of her neck, and her heart fluttered with tenderness at the warmth of his breath against her neck. 

“I love you,” Nil murmured suddenly, and Aloy smiled, feeling totally and completely at peace for the first time in over a year. She stroked his neck and turned her face towards his ear. “I love you too,” she told him. Then she swallowed hard, and whispered the truth she’d always known deep down. “You’re what I want forever.” 

Nil lifted himself slowly onto his elbows, and again, his handsome face was radiant with pure joy as he gazed down at her. Without saying a word, he smoothed a stray tendril of hair back from her face, then kissed her tenderly and slowly. 

Aloy ran her fingers along his collarbone and kissed him back. Eventually, she and Nil would need to talk. She knew that. But tonight, there was no need for any more words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I need someone to pick me up  
> Overdose my mind with the things I love  
> You can take me there, where my heart beats  
> Where my heart beats free
> 
> Take my hand in the middle of a crisis  
> Pull me close, show me, baby, where the light is  
> I was scared of a heart I couldn't silence  
> But you make me feel good, I like it
> 
>  
> 
> [\- “Feel Good”, by Gryffin & Illenium ft. Daya](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2OR9XoFFWw)  
> 


	12. Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy wants to have a serious conversation about her relationship with Nil, but Nil is determined to distract her.
> 
> NSFW smut. And also plot. :)

Nil slowly opened his eyes to find himself alone in bed. 

A jolt of panic seized his chest and he sat up abruptly, then saw a movement by the balcony. His shoulders relaxed slightly as he recognized Suntress’s silhouette, illuminated by the half-light of early morning. She turned her head to look at him when he sat up. “Morning,” she said softly. 

Nil pushed off the blankets and rose to meet her. She had pulled one of the chairs from the table over to the balcony and was seated with one knee pulled up to her chest. Her hair tumbled over her bare shoulders in a sensual tangle of flames, and she was wearing nothing but Nil’s silk trousers, which were adorably loose on her small form. 

She smiled up at him as he approached and skimmed one hand over his bare chest and abdomen. The rest of Nil’s tension fled him as he took in the contentment in her face and the love in her green-and-gold eyes as she met his gaze. 

_She’s still certain, then,_ Nil thought with relief. Last night had been so perfect that Nil had half-believed it to be a dream. Holding the fire of Suntress’s passion in his hands had finally scalded away the dregs of cold emptiness that he'd been carrying ever since she'd sent him away. He was relieved that she'd said she wanted him forever, because he was convinced that that’s all that would suffice with this woman. 

And yet, Vanasha’s galling words from yesterday kept stabbing at his brain like a Glinthawk’s beak. Whenever he thought back to her words - _Nobody should follow their partner without question. You made her responsible for your happiness_ \- he felt little needles of worry piercing through his contentment. He wished now that he hadn't wasted time listening to her. After all, she was full of shit sometimes. 

Nil forced the uncertainty away and leaned down to kiss Suntress’s welcoming lips. She hooked her hand firmly around his neck, and Nil happily drank in the sweet morning smell of her skin. 

Reluctantly he pulled away from the sweetness of her mouth and idly flicked a strand of her hair back from her shoulder so he could see her breasts. _Much better,_ he thought smugly, then finally lifted his eyes to her face. 

She was smiling knowingly at him, and Nil smiled back with all the complacency of a canny Carja moneylender until Suntress laughed. 

“What are you doing over here?” Nil finally asked. This was a west-facing room, so she hadn't been watching the sunrise. 

“I was talking to Rost,” she replied with a rueful little smile. 

Nil leaned back against the balcony and folded his arms. “Asking ghosts for advice?” he said with a half-smile. This was how she'd described her ritual to him once before. Nil had long accepted it as one of her lovable idiosyncrasies, but now, having done something similar himself after she'd sent him away, he had a new understanding of the practice.

Suntress smiled back at him, but her eyes were earnest. “Sometimes ghosts give the best advice,” she said softly. Then her gaze transitioned from introspective to sensual as she scanned his naked body. 

Nil raised one eyebrow smugly as her eyes trailed leisurely over his pecs, then down over his abs and the ropes of muscle that pointed to his manhood. The heat in her gaze was enough to rouse his morning wood back into wakefulness, and Nil stared back at her with equal intensity, watching with extreme interest as her lips parted in arousal and her nipples tightened into taut little buds. 

He stepped towards her and pulled her from her chair with one hand on her arm. Obediently she rose, and Nil pulled her against his naked body with a possessive hand on her ass. 

She gave a little gasp as his cock rubbed against her crotch, and Nil growled in appreciation of the heat between her legs through the thin silk. 

She slid her hands leisurely from his abs up to his chest, but then she tapped firmly on his chest as though to get his attention. “Nil, hold on a second,” she said weakly, as he lowered his face to nuzzle the line of her jaw. 

“Hmm?” Nil murmured against her neck. He slid his other hand up along her waist and traced her ribs with his thumb. 

“Nil!” she gasped and arched towards him, but then she pushed incongruously at his chest. “We still need to talk.” 

A spike of frustration pierced his lust, and finally he pulled back to frown at her. _Maybe the Tenakth have a point,_ he thought. Why did they have to talk? Now that they were together again, why couldn't they just _be_?

Suntress looked up at him, and her face creased with fond exasperation at the reluctance in his face. “Don't give me that look,” she chided. “This is important. We can't just slide back into doing what we did before.” 

“Why not?” Nil demanded. 

The look on her face was melting into an expression of sadness that Nil didn't like. “I don't want to hurt you again,” she said softly. “I can't… make the same mistakes again. I don't want to see you hurt.” 

He frowned more deeply. “You won’t,” he told her confidently. “You said you wanted to be together forever. So as long as that’s true, you won’t hurt me.” Ruthlessly he shoved away the tiny voice in his mind, the one trying to tell him that she was right: that promises of forever hadn't stopped them from fracturing apart before. 

Suntress stared up at him in mild despair, and Nil hated it. He didn't want any caveats between them. He just wanted to bask in their unequivocal togetherness for a little longer. Was that really so much to ask? 

He reached out and pulled her close again with his left hand curled around the back of her head. She curved into his body without hesitation, which pleased him. When she was pressed flush to his chest, he twined his fingers firmly in her hair and pulled her head back to expose her throat, then lowered his mouth to her ear. “You want to talk right now? Really?” he said matter-of-factly.

Her breath shuddered against his cheek and she splayed her fingers on his abdomen. “We have to,” she breathed, but her silk-clad hips pressing firmly against his bare cock were telling a different story. 

Nil pulled her hair more firmly, then ducked his head to taste her right nipple. A keen of pleasure left her throat and she arched her back, pressing her breasts more firmly towards his mouth. Nil obliged happily with her body’s request, suckling her right nipple firmly into his mouth while stroking his thumb over her left nipple. 

Then abruptly he lifted his head until his lips were hovering a mere inch from hers. “Are you sure you want to talk?” he purred. “You’re not very convincing, Suntress.” 

Without releasing his left hand from her hair, he slid the fingers of his right hand down from her breast towards the waistband of her silk pants and began tugging smoothly at the laces. He could feel her abdomen tensing against his knuckles with her short, sharp breaths as he tugged the laces loose. When the laces were untied, he paused with his hand splayed on her abdomen, just below her navel, and whispered in her ear. “You’d better try again. Tell me you want to talk right now. And _mean_ it.” 

She took a deep, shaky breath, and Nil waited to see what she would do. Finally she swallowed hard and shook her head firmly, and Nil gave her a triumphant, reptilian smile. “So you _don’t_ want to talk right now?” he growled teasingly. 

Again, she shook her head, her eyes squeezed shut, her fingers clenching against his abdomen so that her nails scratched at his skin. A ripple of pleasure fanned out over Nil’s body at the abrasion of her nails, and he gave her hair a small tug. “So what _do_ you want, then?”

Wordlessly she bucked her hips towards his erection, then arched so her nipples brushed against his chest. Unable to resist the temptation of her breasts, Nil slid his hand up from her abdomen to palm one breast greedily, savouring the silk of her skin and the puckered tightness of her nipple on his palm. “Use your words,” he taunted. 

Her eyes flew open, and they were blazing with irritation and lust. “ _Touch_ me, you- you barbaric-”

Her words were cut off with a strangled cry as Nil deftly slid his hand into her silk pants and plunged one finger inside of her. He hissed with pleasure at the feel of her tight heat and how utterly wet she was. 

Suntress’s hands flew up to clutch at his shoulders so she could thrust against his hand more firmly. Nil released her hair and grabbed her hip firmly with his left hand to keep her still. “Let me do this,” he hissed in her ear, and she whined desperately in response, but she stopped thrusting. 

Carefully and slowly, Nil slid a second finger inside of her, savouring the stretching tightness of her pussy around his fingers and her mewl of pleasure. Then gradually he increased the speed of his thrusting, finishing each stroke of his fingers with a small come-hither curl of his fingers to coax her pleasure from the tender bundle of nerves within her inner walls. 

Suntress moaned and panted, her forehead pressed against his neck and her nails pressing into his shoulders, and Nil savoured the sounds of her pleasure with an almost vindictive enjoyment. Why would she want to talk if they could be doing this instead? 

Suddenly she released her nails from his neck and spat in her palm, then reached down and pumped her fist along the length of his cock. Shock and pleasure rocketed through Nil’s body at the hot grip of her hand, and he gasped involuntarily.

In his sudden pleasure, he forgot to hold her hip still with his left hand, and suddenly she was thrusting hard and swift against his fingers while pumping her hand along his shaft. Then her mouth was at his ear. “Two can play at this game, Carja,” she hissed. 

Nil laughed breathily, then groaned as she swirled her palm over the head of his cock. And then there was a knock at the door. 

_What the fuck?_ Nil thought with a sudden surge of rage. Suntress jolted with startelement, then released his cock and took a step away from him so that his fingers were forced to abandon her body. 

_Not a chance,_ Nil thought viciously. He wasn’t going to let her go now, not like this. He grabbed her arm and dragged her back against him so her back was pressed against his front. He plunged the fingers of his right hand back into her pants and slid his fingers along the length of her cleft, then smothered her involuntary cry with his left hand over her mouth. “What?” he snapped at the unknown intruder outside the door. 

Suntress bucked against his hand. Her left hand flew up to grip his left wrist, but she didn’t pull as though she wanted to be released; she simply grasped his wrist for support. Nil smoothly slid the pad of his right index finger over the swollen bud of her pleasure, and he felt the vibration of her moan through his left palm. “What do you want?” he barked again at the door. 

“Prince Nil?” The tentative voice of a palace messenger floated through the door. “His Radiance the Sun-King requests your presence in the council room. The Utaru representative has arrived.”

“Mm,” Suntress mumbled urgently against Nil’s hand, but he lowered his mouth to her ear. “Don’t even think about it,” he hissed, and circled her clit with his finger until her eyes fluttered shut and her head fell back against his chest in bliss. To the door he called out, “What time is the meeting?”

Suntress was gasping, her breaths hot against his palm and her grip on his wrist tightening. Nil could tell from the tense arching of her back that she was close to her climax. Teasingly he slid his finger away from her clit and stroked the soft petals of her labia until she strained and writhed in his arms, but his grip over her mouth was too firm to allow her much movement. 

“The Blameless Marad is requesting the council’s presence as soon as possible, preferably within half an hour,” the messenger replied. 

“Plenty of time,” Nil purred in Suntress’s ear. He smiled wickedly at her answering growl, then slipped his finger back up to trace around her clit again until she moaned against his hand. Then he called out to the messenger again. “Is the rest of the council aware?” 

Suntress’s abdomen was tense and taut, and she was holding her breath. Nil knew she was about to come; after all, the language of her body was his favourite tome. He continued the rhythmic circular motions of his finger around her sweet bud as he listened to the messenger’s reply. 

“All the council members are aware, except Aloy of the Nora. She couldn’t be found at her quarters.” 

Suddenly Suntress gave a huge gasp and arched her back before throwing her head back against his shoulder, and Nil almost laughed out loud as he caught her scream of pleasure in his hand, smothering the delicious sound of her bliss. “I’ll let her know,” Nil told the messenger cheekily, then he hissed in pain as Suntress suddenly twisted her face in his grip and bit the flesh of his hand. 

“Thank you, Prince Nil.” Then Nil listened to the messenger’s footsteps walking away. 

As soon as her body stopped spasming with pleasure, Suntress ripped Nil’s hands away from her body and whirled on him, then shoved him in the chest. “You bastard!” she hissed. 

But Nil only grinned at her. She was glaring at him, but he could see the smile twitching at the corners of her lips. “Are you going to pretend you didn’t enjoy that?” he teased. 

The smile finally broke over her face, but she advanced on him again to punch him lightly in the stomach. He laughed and captured her wrists in his hands to pull her close as she continued to faux-berate him. “You’re disgusting,” she informed him haughtily, but the grin on her face dampened the impact of her words. “They call _me_ a savage, but I’m nothing compared to you. You’re just a shameless, unapologetic, brazen... savage.” 

Effortlessly Nil lifted her and wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her over to the bed. “Shamelessly, unapologetically, brazenly in love with you, maybe,” he replied, then tossed her down on the bed and pulled off her silk pants. 

Suntress laughed wildly as Nil stretched himself over her, then she gasped in ecstasy as he slid his hard cock inside of her. 

Nil buried his face in her fragrant neck, then bit her shoulder as he thrust powerfully into her tight, slick heat. She cried out with blissful pain at his bite and dug her nails into his back, and everything about this moment was so delicious, so damn _good_ , that Nil almost couldn’t believe what he was about to do. 

But even though it seemed fucking impossible, he was going to go through with his little plan. Some perverse part of him wanted to punish Suntress for wanting to spoil their newly rediscovered happiness by dredging up the past, so he punished her the only way he could think of. 

He suddenly pulled his cock out of her warm, yielding, delicious pussy and stood from the bed, then pulled on his pants. “Well, Suntress, better get dressed. Your little council friends are waiting.” 

Once his pants were laced up, he turned to look at her. She was lying on her side and gaping at him in horror as though he had suddenly traded bodies with Helis. “I… what?” she squeaked in total confusion.

Nil almost laughed, but he mastered his face into an innocent expression. “Council meeting,” he said. “Let’s go.” He started pulling on his sandals. 

Suntress flopped onto her back and groaned loudly, arching her back like a Carja bow and fisting her hands in her hair with frustration. Nil’s eyes got stuck on her body for a moment, and his resolve almost shattered; the planes of her flat stomach contrasted so exquisitely with the roundness of her breasts and her hips, and the cream-and-maize of her skin was begging to be tasted. Was he _sure_ he wanted to spurn this opportunity just for a bit of petty revenge? 

_Stay strong,_ he told himself. This might be the epitome of cutting off his nose to spite his face, but it would be worth it if it distracted her from her ill-conceived plan to _talk_. 

She arched her back again, then slid her right hand along the length of her body and down towards the apex of her thighs. Then, while Nil watched, she started stroking the taut nub between her legs. She turned her head to look at Nil. “You can’t be serious,” she panted desperately. “You really won’t finish what you started?” 

Nil almost caved in. _Almost._ She was just so fucking tempting. But he forced himself to turn away as he lifted his tassets from the floor. “I really won’t,” he told her over his shoulder. He drew strength from the knowledge that even if she found her pleasure at her own hands, it wouldn’t be as good as what he could give her. She’d told him that countless times. 

Suntress made a deeply frustrated sound somewhere between a growl and a scream, and Nil heard the bed creaking as she rose to her feet. “I can’t believe this,” she raged at him as she bad-temperedly started gathering her clothes and pulling them on. “You really are a complete barbarian.” 

Nil leaned back against the table and watched her complacently as she dressed with haphazard fury. “Really? I think this is a fairly sophisticated form of torture,” he reasoned lazily. “I’ve turned the infamous Nora Huntress into a single-minded creature of lust.” 

She shot him a sharp glare as she racked her weapons on her back, then shoved his chest again on her way to the door. “You'll pay for this later,” she gritted. 

Nil smiled wickedly and grabbed her wrist, then tugged her towards him and kissed her hard. He slid his tongue into her yielding mouth, then nipped at her lower lip with his teeth until she melted against him. Then he slowly lifted his mouth from hers. “I count on it,” he whispered, then opened the door and mock-politely gestured for her to precede him. 

She stared at him with a combination of rueful amusement and frustration, her eyes blazing with a promise of sensual retribution, and Nil smirked triumphantly at her. Then she shook her head with a smirk of disbelief before stepping through the door.

Nil followed her with a distinct swagger in his step. Now he could bask in the private knowledge that Suntress would be wet for him while trying to do her peacekeeping business. 

But more importantly, he was safe from difficult conversations and truths. For the moment, at least. 

******************

Nil and Suntress walked into the council room to find Vanasha, Avad and Marad chatting with an Utaru man whom Nil vaguely recognized from their stay in The Heartland. Avad ushered them close as they entered the room. “Aloy, Nil. Let me introduce you to Lars, an advisor to Governor Ilya.” 

Suntress nodded and grasped the Utaru man’s forearm in greeting, and Nil gave him a more reserved nod. “I’m glad to see someone from The Heartland here,” Suntress said. “How is Ilya?”

Lars nodded. “She’s well, thank you for asking. Very busy trying to arrange transportation of medical resources and food to the refugees across Plainsong.”

Suntress nodded, her face falling into the serious frown that Nil associated with business. “Hopefully we’ll be able to help with that,” she replied.

At that moment, Uthid and Erend entered the room, and Marad clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Please, let’s begin,” he said, and they all took their customary places around the table, with Lars standing at Nil’s left and Suntress at his right. 

Avad looked around the table. “Thank you for coming so swiftly. As you can see, we have an honoured guest.” He nodded to the Utaru representative. “Lars, if you would fill us in on the current situation with the Tenakth?” 

Lars nodded and folded his hands humbly in front of him. “As you know, my most recent information is unfortunately about a week out of date. At that time, the Tenakth numbered some three hundred fighters strong, and their forces were still growing. They had not yet left Farmer’s Blessing at that time, but I can’t say now what the situation is.” 

“Fire and spit,” Erend cursed, and Uthid and Vanasha shifted restlessly at this news, but Nil smiled excitedly. Three hundred Tenakth? He hadn’t even known their tribe numbered that many. This was really going to be the battle of a lifetime. 

Suntress rested her hand on his forearm as though to calm him, then spoke to Avad, Uthid, and Marad. “We’ll need to move soon. What’s the plan?” 

“The army will be ready to head south tomorrow before dawn,” Marad confirmed, and Suntress nodded with satisfaction. He looked at Lars. “Two companies will go to Plainsong, and three will remain here to defend the Sundom. The Sun-King’s personal guard will also remain.” 

Lars spread his hands helplessly. “I’m afraid that I am relatively naive when it comes to military matters. I hope I’m not losing my bargaining position by admitting that I don’t know what means.”

“A Carja company is two hundred soldiers, including thirty Oseram canon operators,” Nil supplied lazily.

Suntress nodded confirmation of this and leaned forward, her eyes on Marad and her palms on the table. “Given the notoriety of the Tenakth as warriors, I suggest you send another company. Eliminating the Tenakth threat before it has a chance to reach the Sundom would be in the best interests of the Carja.”

Marad and Avad looked to Uthid, and the grizzled commander nodded. “It’s sound logic. We’ll make arrangements for another company,” he agreed, and Suntress relaxed and leaned back. 

Then Vanasha turned and smiled at Lars. “As you know, Lars, the Carja are still recovering from the Eclipse War. In particular, our vast population has high demands in terms of food supplies. In exchange for the Carja’s protection from the Tenakth, we are requesting contributions of food supplies from the Utaru, given the Fertile Plains’ bountiful reputation.” 

Lars smiled and nodded. “Ilya and I figured as much. This is something we are certainly happy to help with, though I ask you to keep in mind that some of our southern farms have been stripped by the Tenakth.”

“Of course,” Vanasha demurred. “We’ll take this into account when we draw up our agreement.” She tilted her head. “The Carja are also interested in establishing trade routes with the Utaru once this threat is dealt with…” 

Negotiations continued for some time, and Nil’s attention faded in and out. At one point, discussions turned to formalizing the training of Utaru fighters among the Carja. Avad turned to look at Nil and Suntress. “Aloy and Nil, your unique expertise with Nora and Tenakth combat styles would make you invaluable as trainers whenever you are available and in Meridian. Would you be willing to assist in this respect?” 

Nil glanced at Suntress, expecting her to say yes for them both, but he was surprised at her reply. “We’ll consider it. Our plans when this threat is over are uncertain.” 

Avad nodded graciously. “Please think about it, and let us know what you decide.” Then they continued their discussions, while Nil frowned at Suntress in confusion. It wasn’t like her to not agree to help. 

Her arms were folded as she listened intently to the nattering of the council, but eventually she noticed his frown. She leaned towards him and lifted her chin to murmur in his ear. “I won’t speak for you. You can decide whether you want to help with the training or not,” she said. 

Nil wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he said nothing. 

Some time later, the council meeting wrapped up, and the council members began to disperse to their various duties. Vanasha, Marad, and Lars headed to Marad’s office to iron out details for their trade routes, while Avad, Uthid, and Erend headed to the strategy room to discuss tactics. 

Avad turned to Suntress and Nil once more. “If you are available now, your assistance with strategizing would be most welcome. You know the lay of the Utaru’s land better than any of us.” 

“I would like to,” Suntress said immediately. Then she bit her lip. “But…” And she turned to look up at Nil. 

Nil frowned more deeply at her. Why wasn’t she doing what she wanted to do? “You want to go strategize? So let’s strategize,” he said to her in a low voice, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And to him, it was. Why was she hesitating?

“Do _you_ want to?” she asked insistently. “You don’t have to come.” 

Nil gazed at her in exasperation, then fondly tucked one of her braids behind her ear. “I go where you go, Suntress.” 

To Nil’s dismay, she scowled at his words. “We’ll talk about this later,” she murmured, and Nil did _not_ like the menacing tone to her voice. Then she turned back to Avad, Erend, and Uthid. “I have maps of the Utaru land scanned on my Focus. That will help with planning formations…”

Nil followed her broodingly as she walked to the war room with the other men. _Talk,_ he thought with disgust. _All anyone ever wants to do is talk._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things: 
> 
> 1\. The smut at the start of this chapter… was an accident. HAHA I had originally planned it to be like a serious conversation but Nil has a mind of his own and I just let that man do what he wants… hope the playful feel wasn't jarring given that most of this story is more serious!  
> 2\. I am the Jon Snow of military stuff (i.e. I know nothing), so anything I write in this chapter and any others that has to do with war is owed to Wikipedia or to [this website.](http://www.milsf.com/military-organization/)  
> 


	13. Waterfall (Reprise)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil finally agrees to a talk with Aloy about their future, and takes her back to a place rife with memories.
> 
> NSFW smut. Again. I'm obsessed. Sorry not sorry.

Avad accompanied Nil and Suntress to the bridge leading back to the main city after the strategizing meeting, his face creased in a focused frown. “Thank you both for your time,” he told them. “No plan is ever foolproof, as we all know, but I feel much more comfortable having had your insight. I know Uthid and Marad feel the same.” 

Suntress grasped Avad’s forearm and nodded. “We’ll see you tomorrow, before the army moves out,” she told him. 

Avad nodded agreement, though Nil could plainly see the anxiety in his face. Then he turned to Nil. “Nil, if I may, I’d like to impose on your time once more. Will you come back to the palace after sunset to speak with me? I know Aloy said you have errands this afternoon, but I have a proposition I’d like to discuss with you alone.” 

Nil raised his eyebrows in surprise, but his reply was nonchalant. “All right.” 

Avad smiled them. “Walk in light, Aloy. Until this evening, Nil.” Then he walked away. 

Suntress watched Avad’s departure with one eyebrow raised in curiosity, but she didn't comment. Then she looked up at Nil. “Come on,” she said briskly, and began to walk along the bridge back to the city. 

Reluctantly Nil fell into step behind her. She sounded very businesslike, and he didn’t think he’d be able to divert her this time. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“Somewhere quiet,” she replied. She turned her head to look at him, and her gaze was warm but determined. “Nil, we _need_ to talk. No more distractions. Don’t think I didn't know your game this morning,” she warned, but her lips lifted in a little half-smile. 

Nil smirked back at her. “You were happy to go along with it then. Are you sure you don’t want more of the same? I can finish what I started…” He ran a blatantly sexual look over her body, then pulled her towards him with a hand on her bare waist. 

She took a deep breath, but pulled away from him. “ _Extremely_ tempting, but no. We have things we need to sort out.” 

Nil dropped his hand from her waist and sighed. “Suntress… can’t we just be happy? Words can be like spoil on meat, creeping over something perfectly delicious. Is this really necessary?”

She stopped and gazed up at him, and Nil suddenly felt guilty as he surveyed the hurt on her face. “You think I’m trying to spoil things?” she asked in a strained voice. 

Nil reached out a conciliatory hand to her, but she stepped out of his reach and shook her head. “That’s what I’m trying to avoid,” she told him, and Nil’s stomach dropped at the edge of hardness in her voice, particularly as she turned on her heel and continued to walk along the bridge at a slightly faster pace. 

Nil reached out and took her arm to slow her down. “Okay, fine, we’ll talk,” he conceded. Anything to wipe that hardness away. “But I want you to come somewhere with me. We can talk on the way.” 

He half-expected her to refuse, and felt a hint of relief when she gazed up at him with a softer expression. “Okay. Where do you want to go?” she asked.

“It’s a surprise,” Nil replied, and he noted the light of curiosity flaring in her eyes with fond amusement. “But I want to find Taran first,” he added. He might be pushing his luck, but he really had meant to speak to Taran earlier. 

Suntress’s eyes widened, and she nodded agreement. “Good idea. If he’s willing to fight, he could really lend us an element of surprise.” 

It didn’t take them long to find the mild-mannered Tenakth. He had been assisting with reconstruction of the western bridge as per Suntress’s suggestion, and they found him there mixing mortar with a few Carja workers. 

His eyebrows lifted in surprise as he noticed them, but he didn’t stop in his mixing. “Aloy, Nil. Are you here for me?” he asked. 

“Yes. There’s going to be a battle between the Carja and the Tenakth,” Nil replied. “We need good fighters. But don’t worry, there will be plenty of killing to go around.” He bared his teeth at Taran in a feral grin. 

Then Suntress spoke. “Taran, the Tenakth have attacked the Utaru in strength, and they’re threatening to move on the Sundom next. You’re under no obligation to fight with us, but your prowess in battle would be appreciated... if you’re willing to go up against your own tribe. Nil tells me you’re an excellent fighter.” 

Taran looked at Nil in surprise, and Nil shrugged in casual agreement. He had no problem admitting that Taran was a good fighter. Taran just wasn’t a good Tenakth.

Finally Taran stopped stirring the mortar and nodded. “Certainly, I will join you. It’s the least I can do for your kindness,” he told Suntress.

“We move tomorrow just before dawn. Meet us at the Great Elevator,” Nil commanded. The plan was for Nil, Suntress, Vanasha, and a few other Carja soldiers to leave separately in order to get to Plainsong more quickly and assess the current situation before the rest of the army arrived.

Taran straightened and nodded to Nil in a brisk confirmation. “Thank you, Taran,” Suntress said warmly, then she and Nil headed off in the direction that Nil indicated. 

They walked along the path through Meridian Village towards the jungle without speaking, and Nil wasn’t sure if there was a tension developing between himself and Suntress, or if it was just his own nerves.

Suddenly she reached out and stroked her fingers gently down the inside of his forearm then laced her fingers with his, and Nil immediately felt reassured by her easy touch. 

Once they stepped into the quiet of the jungle, Nil released her hand so they could pick their way through the foliage more safely, but his nerves returned, along with Vanasha’s and Suntress’s words. _You were miserable, and you were making me miserable. Nobody should follow their partner without question._

Nil suddenly turned to Suntress. “Why did you defer to me in the council meeting this morning?” he asked her abruptly. Maybe if he shunted the attention onto her, it would deflect her thoughts away from his flaws. 

She looked at him in surprise, but answered him readily. “I wanted you to have a say in what we do. I’m always the one deciding, and that’s not fair. I don’t want to run roughshod over you again.”

Nil frowned. He didn’t want her to ask his opinion at the expense of her own. Her confidence had always been one of his favourite things about her. “Don’t ask my permission. Don’t question your judgment. How many times do I have to tell you, Suntress? Stormbirds don’t ask permission to dominate the skies. They take the skies with lightning and blood. I want you to keep doing what you want to do.” 

She frowned more deeply at him. “Well, I want you to do what _you_ want to do!”

“Okay,” Nil replied smoothly. “What I want is to be with you.”

She stared up at him in despair. “You _are_ with me! We’re together! But you can’t just keep following me everywhere!” 

And there it was: the truth he wanted so badly to avoid. And despite his efforts to avoid it, he’d penned himself into the corner with it. “Everyone keeps saying this,” he muttered resentfully.

Suntress frowned. “Like who?”

“You. Vanasha.” That insidious little voice in his head. 

“Vanasha…” Suntress pursed her lips, then sighed. “She might be an interfering chuff, but she’s right. It’s not fair to you to just follow me around doing things you don’t want to do. And…” she hesitated and licked her lips nervously, then continued quietly, “It’s not fair for me. To be the only thing that makes you happy.” 

“You’re not,” Nil objected. And it was true. His time away from her had reminded him how much he enjoyed bandit hunting, and there was still so much sport to be had in the wake of the Eclipse War. And, if he was honest, some of the odd jobs he had done with Luka and Taran hadn’t been so bad. “But how are we supposed to be together if I can’t go places with you?” 

She stared at him without answering. Nil raised his eyebrows and folded his arms. “You don’t have an answer, do you?” 

Abruptly she ran her fingers through her hair. “We’ll still go places together!” she retorted. “But we can’t… just go _everywhere_ together.” 

“I don’t understand,” Nil said flatly. He was starting to feel angry. “Why did you bring this up if you don’t have a solution?”

“I’m trying to find a solution _with_ you, but you’re not helping so far,” she snapped. Then she turned away from him and continued trampling through the jungle towards the south, where Nil had begun guiding them.

Nil gritted his teeth, then followed her. “So you didn’t mean it when you said you didn’t want us to be separated,” he stated in a flat voice. He didn’t want to call her a liar; he’d done that already, when they were on their way to Plainsong, and he was loathe to hurt her again with such an accusation, but that’s the word that was building in his chest. The growing sense of betrayal and rejection in his chest reminded him too strongly of the past, and he _hated_ it. He’d thought this pain would be over now. 

She spun towards him, and the distress written across her face made Nil’s chest hurt despite his anger. “How can you say that?” she demanded. “I _don’t_ want to be separated! But if it’s a choice between you following me everywhere and things… falling apart completely, or us being apart sometimes to do what we each want to do, then…” Her voice trembled into silence and a tear ran down her face, but she ignored it as she glared up at him. She swallowed hard, then continued speaking in a stronger voice. “It won’t be like before. We’ll still be together. Just not… physically.” 

Nil gave a hopeless little laugh and ran his hand over his hair. This made no sense to him. “Suntress…” Then, on impulse, he reached out and pulled her into his arms. Instantly she wrapped her arms around him tightly, and Nil could feel her tears on the exposed skin of his chest. 

For a long moment Nil just held her. He soaked in the heat of her skin and her scent of winterfresh and warmth. _This_ was home. He knew it was the same for her. How could she be okay with tearing this apart, even temporarily? 

As though she could hear his thoughts, she spoke in a voice thick with tears. “Nil, think about it. There are things I have to do that you don’t want to do, and I won’t make you do those things anymore. So what… what other option is there?”

“You can stop saying ‘yes’ to everything,” Nil said suddenly. He and Suntress had talked about this before, mostly just in passing or in jest, but Nil had always thought she was too agreeable to giving her time to other people. It was the reason he’d disliked Vanasha from the start, and now that Nil thought about it, even Vanasha had mentioned that Suntress spread herself too thin. 

Nil gently drew back from her embrace to look at her face. “Stop helping every single person who asks you for something,” he said. 

She frowned at him as she wiped her cheeks. “Nil, I can’t just _not_ help when there’s a need. The strength to stand alone-” 

“... ‘is the strength to help those who can’t’, yes yes,” Nil finished impatiently. He knew her code; after all, he’d followed it for some time. “But you can’t be the only one who helps. There are some things that only you can do, like fixing GAIA. But really, Suntress, does Petra need _you_ to hunt Trampler parts? Do the Nora really need _you_ to collect Dreamwillow? There really isn’t anyone else who can do those things?” He raised his eyebrows at her expectantly. 

Suntress took a deep breath and didn’t reply for a long moment. Nil felt a little shoot of hope in his chest; she was considering his proposal. “If you turn down other people’s little tasks, you’ll have more time to do what I want to do,” he continued. “Which is-” 

“Bandit hunting,” she finished, then gave him a watery smile. “You’re single-minded, I get it.” 

Nil smirked and continued to watch her as she bit her lip pensively. Finally she lifted her eyes to his and nodded slowly. “Okay. That’s… a fair point. I…” She shook her head slightly ruefully as though she couldn’t believe what she was agreeing to, then gave him a tentative smile. “I’ll… try saying no once in awhile.” Then she tilted her head to the side and smirked at him. “You’re still the only person I’ve ever said ‘no’ to.” 

“You wound me,” Nil deadpanned, and she smiled more widely. They continued walking south towards Nil’s unspecified destination in thoughtful silence. 

After some time, Suntress spoke again in a reluctant voice. “Nil… what about the things I have to do that others can’t? Like helping Sona and Varl with the Nora braves? Or fixing GAIA? What will you do?” 

“I’ll come with you to fix GAIA,” Nil said easily. “That’s something I’m interested in.” Truthfully, what really interested him was watching Suntress mastering a completely foreign world. The concentration in her face and the alien, delicate movements of her hands over the incomprehensible displays of lights in the Ancient Ones’ ruins had unnerved him deeply the first time he’d seen it, but now it was another of her idiosyncratic skills that he loved. 

She smiled up at him with sudden, uninhibited joy. “I was hoping you’d say that,” she admitted quietly. “It’s been… lonely. Not having anyone to talk to about Zero Dawn.”

“I could tell,” Nil replied. He stepped over a fallen tree, then turned back to look at her. 

Her head was tilted to the size and she was gazing at him affectionately. He felt suddenly hopeful, warmed by the obvious love in her gaze. He extended his hand to her. “Come. We’re almost there,” he said, and she took his hand, twining her fingers into his as they continued through the jungle. 

After another moment, Suntress spoke again. “And helping the Nora braves? What will you do while I do things like that?”

Nil winced internally. _She’s relentless. Tenacious as a Scrapper’s jaws,_ he thought in resignation. He had hoped she would let it drop; he’d purposely evaded saying anything about that, because he genuinely wasn’t sure what he would do. The little voice in his mind that had taken root after he’d left Suntress was telling him he _could_ help. After all, the idle nattering of strangers no longer grated sharply at his skin in the same way it used to. But at the same time, he genuinely didn’t _enjoy_ helping people in the same way that Suntress did. It was never something he was going to find satisfaction from. 

But Nil was starting to realize that maybe… maybe he couldn’t always just do only what he enjoyed. For as long as he could remember, Nil had always done exactly what he felt like. And for a long time, following Suntress everywhere and doing what she wanted had been just that. Then, as time had gone on, he’d become resentful when she’d asked him to do things he didn’t want to do. 

But now, he knew the bitterness of being away from her. It was unacceptable. If he wanted to be with her… maybe only doing whatever _he_ wanted wouldn’t work anymore. 

_Compromise._ It was a concept Nil knew theoretically, but not personally. It sounded like it was something Suntress was willing to do, if she was going to try turning down petty requests for help. 

Maybe Nil needed to compromise, but in the opposite direction: be more agreeable to helping. 

He bit the inside of his cheek and didn’t answer. He needed to think. Then Suntress squeezed his hand. “You could hunt while I train,” she suggested softly, and Nil sighed. She was back on this separation idea _again_. “Or you and Luka and Taran-” 

Nil shook his head. “No. I’m finished with that,” he said. Now that he had her again as his companion, what need did he have for any others?

She frowned up at him. “Do they know that?” she asked pointedly. “They seem very… loyal.” 

Nil frowned back at her. What relevance did Luka and Taran have to him and Suntress? Abruptly he changed the subject. “If we did try this... separation idea. Going different ways and meeting up again. How would it even work?” he demanded. “How would we know where to find each other? Will our lives just be a series of meetings and partings, like duels where nobody ever prevails? That would be so... unsatisfying.”

Suntress looked upset. “It wouldn’t be like that all the time!” she argued. “Just… sometimes. And… we’ll figure it out,” she added, slightly desperately. “I’m not sure…” Then suddenly her face went blank and she stopped walking. 

Nil stared at her in alarm as she gazed vacantly into the middle distance, her mouth slightly open. Then she gazed up at him, her face suddenly blazing with excitement. “I have an idea,” she told him. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before! I’m not certain it’ll work, I’ll have to figure out how to configure them, but…” 

And then she trailed off as she realized where they were. They were walking alongside a large river, and in the near distance, the powerful rushing sound of water could be heard. Nil watched her with a sudden tenderness as the edge of excitement in her face softened with nostalgia. She gazed up at him, her eyes shining. “Nil… are we…?”

He grinned at her. He knew she’d like the spot where he’d brought her. “Come,” he said again with a tug on her hand, and they walked in the direction of the water’s roar.

A short time later, Nil slowed to a stop as they arrived at his intended location. Suntress stared up at the waterfall with the same awe and appreciation as she had the first time they had come here, so long ago. But this time when she turned to look at him, her smile was laced with bittersweet emotion. “Our waterfall,” she whispered. “I haven’t been back here since…” 

Nil reached out and smoothed a braid back behind her ear. In the months after the Eclipse War, he and Suntress had often come here to swim during their forays through the Sundom, and many of the larger boulders in the waterfall’s pool had been graced with the evidence of their passions. In the year after Suntress had sent him away, he’d come here on one occasion, and had made a discovery. 

“I have something to show you,” he said, then without hesitation he dove into the waterfall’s pool and swam towards the left bank of the cliff. Distantly, he heard Suntress’s laugh, then the sound of her splash as she dove in after him. 

Nil swam until he reached a crevice at the base of the cliff where water met rock. Then he treaded briefly until Suntress caught up to him. “Where are we going?” she asked, her face ablaze with curiosity. 

“There’s a short underwater tunnel here. Come,” Nil said, then he took a deep breath and dove underwater, following the length of the crevice. 

After a few heartbeats of swimming, Nil broke the surface, then lifted himself out of the water onto the rocky edge of the pool. He shook the water from his hair like an animal, then turned back expectantly just in time to see Suntress’s head burst from the water. She smoothed her soaking hair back from her face and looked around, her face alight with wonderment. “Nil… how in the Metal Devil did you find this place?” she breathed. 

They were in a cavern. The pool they had emerged from was separated from a second, larger pool by a wide channel of smoothly rippled rock, almost like a landbridge. The cavern extended behind Nil by about ten paces, and there was a small fire circle and a small stockpile of wood. Overhead, the afternoon light slanted through a long but narrow fissure in the rock that extended along almost the full length of the cavern. The water in the larger pool was a deeper turquoise colour than the water in the pool that led to the outside, likely due to some mineral content, from Nil’s best guess. Shimmering ripples of white and turquoise reflected off the walls of the cavern thanks to the afternoon sun. 

Suntress pulled herself out of the water to stand next to him, her mouth open in awe and delight. “How many times did we come to this waterfall together and we never found this?” she asked incredulously. 

Nil shrugged lightly, smirked at her. “We were always otherwise occupied.” He shot her a sensual look and enjoyed her grin of response, then walked over to the fire circle and picked up a roughly-made torch from the ground and lit it with the tinder kit from the pouch around his waist. He propped the torch upright in a natural pit in the rock, then turned back to face her.

She was staring at him, her eyes shining with emotion again. “When did you find this place?” she whispered. 

Nil slowly walked back towards her. “We did a job for Janeva once. Taran, Luka and I,” he began to explain. “Provided some extra security at Sunstone Rock.” 

Suntress gave a sudden laugh, despite the mixture of sorrow and joy in her eyes. “That must have been interesting.” 

“Yes, it was. Interesting to be on the side of the law for once,” he replied with a lazy smile. “After that job, I… came here. Without Taran and Luka. They stayed at Sunstone with Janeva.” 

Nil paused, uncertain how to explain how he came to be here. At the time that he’d accepted that job with Janeva, he had been separated from Suntress for over half a year, and the pain of her loss had dulled somewhat from a vicious stabbing to a dull ache that he carried just under his ribs. But working with Janeva had somehow dredged the pain back up, and to this day, Nil wasn’t sure exactly why. Maybe because the last time he had seen Janeva was when he had reunited with Suntress after his forced stay at Free Heap. Or maybe because Janeva was the only other person aside from Suntress who talked to him like he wasn’t a mindless killing machine. Either way, by the end of their security stint at Sunstone Rock, Nil had felt the pain of her loss as acutely as the day it had happened, unable to bear the company of Janeva or Taran or Luka. He’d felt a terrible urge to be left alone, like he might kill his companions if he didn’t escape from them. Without quite intending to, he’d come to this waterfall, the place where Suntress had first bared her body and her heart to him. Half of his mind had thought it would be better to be numb again, to be desensitized to this torture, but the other half of his mind perversely wanted nothing more than to be in this kind of pain, and eventually, the masochistic part of his brain prevailed.

Nil swallowed hard as the agony of those memories threatened to choke him again. He forced himself to look at her, to drink in the love and empathy in her face, to remember the way they’d moved together last night and her promise of forever. The past was behind him now. He was safe.

“I found this cave by chance,” he said bluntly. “There hadn’t been much rain in the week before. The crevice there wasn’t fully underwater.” He paused, then glanced toward the fire circle. “I stayed here for a while. Maybe… a week. I don’t know. I hunted food, but I just… stayed here for a while.” He turned back to face her. “It made me think of you.” 

Her arms were suddenly around his neck, her face pressed to his cheek, and he could feel her body trembling as he wrapped his arms tightly around her and slid one hand into her hair. “You’re stronger than I am,” she whispered. “I avoided this place like it was corrupted. I couldn’t…” She swallowed hard, and they were pressed together so closely that he could feel the movement of her throat against his collarbone. “It hurt too much to even think of this place,” she admitted. 

Nil leaned back slightly and stroked her cheek with his knuckles. “I think… I wanted the pain,” he told her thoughtfully. “I treasured that most impressive scar you gave me just beneath my ribs. If it hurt, I’d always remember.”

She sobbed suddenly. “I didn’t _want_ to hurt you,” she choked. “Nil, I’m sorry. That’s the last thing I…” She turned her face away from his, now crying so hard she couldn’t speak. 

Nil turned her face back to his with a firm grip on her chin, then smoothed away her tears with his thumb. “Don’t cry, Suntress,” he said softly. “Being here now with you is a good thing. You bring a warmth to this cave that was never here before. Or at least you will when you stop crying.” He smiled at her. 

She choked out a half-sob, half-laugh, then wiped her face on her wrist. Finally she lifted her eyes to his, and her face was sad but earnest. “Nil, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you leave. There should have been… we should have talked about it more. Or at all, really.” She swallowed hard. “Don’t you understand, that’s why I want to talk about this now? I don’t want things to fall apart again because we didn’t talk.” 

“I apologize too,” Nil said suddenly. “I… made you responsible for my happiness.” 

Suntress suddenly smiled at him through her tears. “Did Vanasha tell you to say that?” 

Nil rolled his eyes. “She might have said something about it. But she was… right.” He gazed intensely into Suntress’s brilliant hazel eyes. “I never wanted to hold you back, Suntress. I don’t want to be a dead weight around your shoulders. I only ever want to see you fly.” 

Suntress beamed at him, and despite the tear streaks on her face, she looked brilliantly happy. She reached up and grasped his face in her hands, then rested her forehead against his. “I want to fly with you,” she whispered, and Nil felt a wave of tenderness as he pulled her close with his arms tight around her waist. For a long moment, they stood pressed together in the peaceful half-light of the cavern. 

Then Suntress tilted her chin up to Nil’s ear. “But right now, this Stormbird wants to swim,” she murmured, and then she started pulling off her weapons and clothes. 

An abrupt wave of desire slashed through him as she her clothes collected in a pile on the ground. Soon she was naked and facing the larger pool. She ran one hand through her hair and pulled it over her shoulder, then glanced back at him, a mischievous smile on her lips. “Are you coming?” 

_In more ways than one soon, if I get my way,_ Nil thought wickedly. “Of course,” he replied out loud, then started doffing his own armour and weapons. 

Suntress watched him hungrily as he bared his skin, her fingers twitching with anticipation and her full bottom lip captured in her teeth. When he was finally naked, he took a step towards her, his hand already outstretched to pull her close. 

But she grinned and jumped into the pool and out of his reach with a great splash, scattering cool droplets of water across Nil’s body. He wiped the water from face and looked at her. She was treading in the large pool, a cheeky smile on her lovely face as she looked up at him. “You tortured me this morning. Two can play that game. What makes you think I’m going to make it easy for you now?”

Nil grinned at her and crouched slowly by the edge of the pool. His cock was already throbbing in time with his heart, which was suddenly pounding with excitement. “You want me to hunt you?” 

If possible, she smiled at him even more widely, and Nil gave a low, smug laugh. “Don’t you see how small this cave is? You’re trapped. I’ll catch you as surely as I’d catch a fox in the forest.” 

She suddenly splashed him, and he spluttered as a wave of cold water hit him in the face. “I’d like to see you try,” she taunted. When Nil finally wiped the water from his eyes, she was gone from the larger pool. 

Nil stifled another laugh, listening carefully as he turned his head slowly to look for her in the half-light of the cave. He could hear the echo of her breathing, but he wasn’t sure which direction it was coming from. 

Then he noticed the quality of the shadows change towards the back of the cave, where he’d placed the torch. He turned to look and there she was, her back to the cavern wall, water sluicing down her body from the tendrils of her hair. Suntress smiled at him when she caught his eye, but didn’t move. 

Nil rose to his feet and prowled towards her, waiting for her to suddenly dart away, but she didn’t move. When Nil slowly penned her against the wall with his hands on either side of her head, she still didn’t move. 

Then, when Nil lowered his mouth to hers, she suddenly reached out and palmed his balls, then slid her fist around his cock and squeezed. An electric shock of dizzying pleasure ripped through him at her touch and for a brief second, his vision went dark as the blood rushed thoroughly away from his brain. When he could see again, she was back in the larger pool, laughter all over her face. 

Nil gasped and kneeled at the edge of the pool. “You minx,” he gritted, then spluttered again as she splashed more water at him. 

“Come on, hunter!” she taunted. “Can’t even get your hands on one little Nora?” 

“You’re not just any little Nora,” he called back, then he swiftly launched himself into the pool and grabbed her ankle. He surfaced while pulling her towards him by the leg, and soon his arm was banded around her middle, holding her tight. 

But it turned out that treading water was considerably more difficult when one was holding a struggling demon of fire in one’s arms. Suntress laughed breathlessly and kicked her legs frantically to keep afloat while she shoved at Nil’s arms, but his grip was like a steel band around her middle, and he refused to let go. 

Finally she reached behind herself and ran her nails along Nil’s side, and the shock more than the pain made him loosen his grip around her body. With a sinuous shove, she freed herself from his grip and kicked towards the side of the pool to escape him. 

But Nil was quick. She had barely managed to haul herself out of the pool onto her hands and knees, and her left foot was just about to leave the water when Nil surged towards the edge of the pool and grabbed her left ankle again. 

She looked over her shoulder at him with a grin on her face, then swiftly she flipped over so she was sitting on her bottom. “I don’t think so,” she teased, and she tried to dislodge his grip around her left ankle by kicking gently at his hand with her right foot. 

Nil laughed smugly, then swiftly tugged her back towards him until her lower legs were dangling into the pool. Then, before she could utter another protest, he pushed her thighs apart and lowered his mouth between her legs. 

Suntress gave a wordless cry of pleasure as Nil slicked his tongue over her taut nub. Despite their swim, she was wet with the slippery moisture of her arousal, and Nil savoured its slight saltiness as he slipped his tongue along the length of her labia and dipped gently inside of her before returning to circle the tip of his tongue delicately around her clit. 

He lapped very gently at her feminine folds, knowing that the light pressure would drive her wild. Sure enough, she lay back flat on the rocky ground and arched towards his mouth in a physical plea for more, but Nil reached up and placed a restraining hand on the flat of her belly to keep her still. 

Relentlessly he continued the light pressure over and around the bud of her pleasure until she was keening with frustration and the muscles of her abdomen were rock-hard with tension beneath his palm. Briefly he lifted his mouth from her body to speak. “Say the word I want to hear and you’ll get what you want,” he told her matter-of-factly. 

“More!” she cried, her voice echoing deliciously around the cave, and Nil grinned in victory before lowering his mouth back to her feminine heat. Moments later, she was bucking against his mouth and crying out with pleasure as the increased pressure of his tongue and lips over her clit pushed her over the edge of climax. 

Nil slid one finger inside of her and stroked smoothly in a come-hither motion as her spasms of ecstasy began to slow, and he was gratified by the strong jerk of her hips and the gasp of pleasure torn from her throat. Then he pulled himself out of the water onto his own hands and knees and gripped her hips to pull her under him. “I think I’ve caught you fairly,” he growled to her. 

She was still breathing hard from the aftershock of her orgasm, but she pushed at his chest as he tried to bear down on her. “Or maybe I’ve caught you,” she panted, then reached down between their bodies and smoothed her palm along the length of his cock. 

Nil hissed with exquisite pleasure of her touch, and he was powerless to resist as she surged onto her knees and shoved at his chest until he was sitting back with Suntress kneeling between his legs. Without any further words, she lowered her lips to his erection and took him into the warmth of her mouth. 

Nil groaned with sheer indulgent bliss at the contrast between the heat of her mouth and the cool of the water evaporating from his skin. He stretched lazily and slowly lifted his hips towards her mouth, encouraging her to take him deeper, and she obliged immediately, angling her head slightly to take the head of his cock deeper into her throat. 

“Fuck,” he moaned, his eyes fluttering shut. He felt Suntress’s answering chuckle as an exquisite vibration along his shaft. Then her hand was palming his balls, kneading gently as she slid her lips up and down his length, and a beautiful vibration of pleasure began to build deep in his abdomen.

Nil was gone. There was no need to think or worry, not while her mouth was so hot and her lips so firm in their delicious suction. He responded to the whispering tickle of her hair on his abdomen by winding her tresses loosely in his fingers. 

Then the pressure around his cock suddenly increased as Suntress swallowed with his length deep in her throat. Nil bucked involuntarily, and the buzzing wave of pleasure that was building in his core suddenly surged. She swallowed a second time and Nil groaned, then tugged gently at her hair. “Come here,” he pleaded. He wanted the heat of her pussy, wanted to be pressed skin to skin with her as he came. 

Immediately she straddled his hips, her entrance hovering over his cock, and Nil gripped her hips, more than ready to sheathe himself inside of her tight heat. 

But she was resisting. Nil’s eyes flew open and he looked up at her face. She was smiling mischievously at him, her hands braced on his abdomen, but her hips were raised high - too high for his cock to reach. 

Then he understood. “You holding out on me?” he demanded, and she nodded cheekily. “Revenge,” she told him pertly. “In fact, don’t you have to be back at the palace after sunset?” Nil was appalled when she started to roll off of his body. “It’s getting late. We better-” 

Nil firmly grabbed her hip with his left hand and suddenly brushed his right thumb over her clit, and her words broke off with a gasp. He ruthlessly continued stroking his thumb around her clit. “Fuck me. Right. Now,” he demanded.

She arched and moaned with pleasure, and Nil almost came from the erotic sight of her braced over his cock, her entire body proudly on display and straining for pleasure. But then she spoke. “I don’t think so,” she panted. 

Nil growled with feral frustration and bucked upwards firmly so that the head of his cock brushed against her delicate folds. “You need this as much as I do,” he growled at her. “You want me to fill you up. You want to ride me hard, I know you do. So get down here.” 

He ran his thumb over her clit once more, and she shuddered. “All right, you win,” she moaned, then finally she slid her sleek heat onto his cock. 

Together they gasped at the intensity of that first thrust, then suddenly they were fucking intensely, their hips joining together fiercely and the pleasure building so acutely in Nil’s body that he almost couldn’t catch a breath between thrusts. Nil splayed his fingers over Suntress’s taut belly, his eyes drinking in the incredible sight of her straddling his body, his eyes drifting down between her legs to watch as his shaft flashed in and out of view as she rode him. 

Then suddenly the sizzling firebomb of pleasure in his core exploded into flame, and Nil surged into a sitting position, wrapping his arms tightly around her so they were chest to chest as he thrust into her even more wildly in the throes of his orgasm. He gasped into her hair and bit her shoulder, and his pleasure amplified even further as she cried out and scored her nails along his back. 

As Nil’s climax finally began to calm, the final pulses sizzling along his nerves like shockwire, he relaxed but didn’t release his tight hold around Suntress’s waist. Happily, she seemed just as loathe to release him; she gently rubbed her cheek against his, then tucked her face against his neck while keeping her arms twined around his neck. 

After a long, perfect moment being pressed together, Suntress murmured against his neck. “I think I need some hintergold paste for my knees. They hurt.” She shifted slightly and pulled back from his embrace, and Nil saw her wince out of the corner of his eye. “Worth it, though,” she told him with a cheeky smile.

Nil smirked in response. “Lie back,” he said as he gently lifted her from his lap, then solicitously he rinsed her abraded knees with cool water from the pool before lounging on the rocky ground beside her. Immediately she rolled towards Nil so that he was lying on his back, with one of her legs thrown over his.

She propped her chin up on her fist and gazed down at him thoughtfully. Nil stared back into the warm green-and-gold of her eyes. “Do you want to talk some more, Suntress?” he asked, but this time without reluctance. Maybe it was the reassurance of her love, or the fact that they’d both apologized for the past, or maybe it was just the sex, but Nil was feeling less worried now about the future. 

To his surprise, she shook her head slightly. “Not now,” she said. “Maybe…” She sighed, then said, “I don’t know. We can’t plan for everything that might happen. So maybe we should just agree to try and stay together as much as possible... But if we have to separate, _if_ we do, then I have an idea to make it… easier.” She sighed again. “But it’ll have to wait until this Tenakth problem is dealt with.” 

Nil smiled ferally. “Well, now I just have another reason to kill Merat as soon as possible.”

She laughed, her eyes glinting with humour. Before she could speak, Nil rolled her onto her back and kissed her neck, making her hum with pleasure. “I know what you’re going to say,” he drawled jokingly against her skin. “I’m _so_ disgusting.”

“No, actually,” she retorted, but her eyes were gentle as Nil pulled back to look at her. “I was just going to say… thank you for bringing me here. You cleared the shadows from this place for me.” 

Then she reached up and tenderly pushed an errant strand of hair from his mohawk away from his forehead. “Nil, you’re sun that lights my life too. Or however you put it before.” Her smile became cheeky, but the emotion in her eyes burned intensely.

Nil grinned at her, then lowered his face to kiss her again. Maybe there was no perfect solution for them. But if Suntress was willing to compromise, to help a little less in order to do what he wanted to do, then maybe… maybe Nil could meet her halfway and help a little bit more. 

All Nil needed to know was that they both wanted the same thing, and that was a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Four (!) things: 
> 
> 1\. Idea for this smut was shamelessly inspired by the love scene between [Jon Snow and Ygritte in Game of Thrones.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jLG3-dYWzU) I’ve actually been to the cave in Iceland where they filmed that scene! Poor Ygritte… they really should never have left that cave. (Incidentally, If ever there was an HZD movie, Rose Leslie would be my #1 choice to play Aloy.)  
> 2\. Also, a small line in here borrowed shamelessly from a recent episode of HBO's Girls, where Adam says that “if it hurts, you’ll always remember.” (Apparently I watch a hell of a lot of TV.)  
> 3\. Finally, the song I listened to on loop while writing the hard-conversation part of this chapter: [Oceans by Leon Lour.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAGybpow2co)  
> 4\. Plot comes back in the next chapter. Everyone goes to Plainsong. O_o  
> 


	14. Cheap Shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avad and Nil have a private conversation. Later, Aloy and her companions head back to Plainsong in anticipation of the Tenakth battle.

“Nil, thank you for coming. Let’s go to the war room.”

Nil nodded easily and followed Avad into the palace. The war room was one of the few rooms in that was actually enclosed with proper walls and a door, thus making it an obvious choice as the place where confidential wartime strategizing took place. 

Once inside, Avad closed the door and turned to Nil, who was leaning casually against the war room’s large round table with his arms folded. “I trust you had a productive afternoon?” Avad asked politely.

“Yes, we did,” Nil replied, then smirked, unable to stop himself from thinking of his escapades in the cave with Suntress that afternoon. He reluctantly forced his mind back to the present and looked at Avad placidly. “What did you want to talk about?”

Avad gazed at him without speaking for a moment, and Nil raised one eyebrow quizzically. Then a sudden flare of white-hot pain seared across Nil’s right cheekbone. Stars burst in his vision, and he stumbled slightly to the side. 

He turned to look at Avad in shock and wiped a trickle of blood from a fresh cut on his cheekbone. “Did… did you just sucker punch me?” Nil demanded incredulously.

Avad shook his hand with a wince of pain, then flexed his fingers. He lifted his eyes apologetically to Nil’s face. “Yes, unfortunately.”

“Why?” Nil asked, genuinely perplexed. 

Avad looked at him for a long moment, his head tilted to the side as he continued to gingerly flex his fingers. Avad’s eyebrows were creased with confusion, and he seemed to be struggling to find words. “I'm honestly not sure,” he said finally. “Not for any good logical reason, certainly. I just… felt like it. And now… I regret to say that I feel better.” He trailed off sheepishly. 

Nil grinned. Somehow, he understood. For the first time in twenty-five years, he felt like he and Avad were finally speaking the same language. 

Avad suddenly grinned back, and for a brief moment, Nil felt like he was looking into a mirror. Then Avad mastered his face into a regal expression and gestured politely for Nil to sit. “The reason I asked you here was to offer you a job. As you must know, your knowledge of the Tenakth has been invaluable during this current crisis. But your assistance with strategizing today… you had _very_ good ideas. Even when this Tenakth crisis is… controlled, it would be a boon to the Sundom to have your expertise in wartime or defense situations in the future.” 

Nil stared at Avad with surprise, and some trepidation. A job here at the palace? But Avad wasn’t finished. “I know you had started officer training with the military, but you didn’t finish. I think it’s clear that if you completed your officer training, you would rise in the ranks quite swiftly. But I don’t think that’s something you would be interested in-” 

“Never,” Nil interrupted. If he was a commanding officer, he’d be responsible for a bunch of other people. He wouldn’t be able to do what he wanted. And what was the point of belonging to the military when the Sundom wasn’t at war? Nobody was killing each other. It would be boring. Furthermore, and more importantly, if he was tied to the Carja military, he wouldn’t be free to travel with Suntress. 

Avad smiled ruefully. “I thought so. Which is why I’m offering you a position as a military consultant. During times of war or conflict, I would summon you to Meridian for your counsel, but in peacetime, this would not be very frequent. You would be welcome to come and go and to offer advice as you pleased.” Avad’s regal expression softened somewhat, and his brown eyes were knowing as he gazed at Nil. “The arrangement I’m offering you is similar to the arrangement we have with Aloy. Though, as you know, she’s involved more heavily with various matters in the Sundom, so she is here quite frequently anyway.”

A bubble of hope rose in Nil’s chest. He and Suntress as consultants to the Sundom? It would give them a built-in reason to be in Meridian together. It could give Nil something to do if they were forced to be apart. And it could be his first step towards that compromise of helping people in need. He knew she’d be pleased about this. 

Nil looked at Avad steadily. “I accept.” 

Avad smiled warmly at him. “Excellent! That’s truly excellent. But we can wait until after this battle to formalize our arrangement. The outcome will give us a better idea of how often we’ll need you…” 

Lines of worry began to crease Avad’s face again as he rose from the table, and Nil rose as well. “Don’t worry,” Nil said with confidence. “We’ll crush them. Hopefully literally, with a boot on their tender skulls. You’ll be missing out.” He eyed Avad thoughtfully. “Don’t you ever miss the thrill of battle? You always were good with a sword.” 

Avad eyed him with surprise, but shook his head. “I never particularly enjoyed combat,” Avad admitted softly. “And I lost any taste for it after I had to… the Mad King…”

“Mm,” Nil acknowledged understandingly. “Yes, that would have put me off as well. Killing someone so weak would have been a shameful stain on my record.” 

Avad stared at him, then smiled uncertainly and shook his head. “We live in interesting times,” he said softly, and Nil raised an eyebrow curiously. Then Avad looked directly at Nil again with a professional smile. “Well, thank you again, Nil. I’m sure this will be a fruitful alliance. We will formalize it as soon as we are able.” Then Avad’s gaze softened again, and he gazed at Nil with something like wistfulness. 

Nil raised his eyebrows quizzically until Avad spoke again. “Perhaps… will you and Aloy formalize your alliance at some point? The celebration would shake the foundations of Meridian, I assure you.” 

_A Carja wedding?_ Nil’s stomach jolted while a flurry of butterflies simultaneously took flight in his chest. Nil had actually never thought about it. He’d never imagined himself being involved in something as conventional and socially acceptable as a marriage… but then, he’d also never imagined that he would love someone with the ferocity that he loved Suntress, or that he’d want to be joined to someone for the rest of his life. 

But Avad’s words set his imagination on fire. Terrifying, exhilarating fire. _Would she…?_ Nil suddenly felt uncomfortable, so he fell back on humour. “We’d need a Lodge ropecaster to tie her down long enough for a wedding,” Nil quipped. “That Stormbird doesn’t stay still for long.” And Nil absolutely loved that about her.

Avad chuckled. “You’re right about that.” He gestured politely towards the door. “Rest well tonight, Nil. I’ll see you and the advance guard in the morning.” 

Nil opened the door to leave. Then, on sudden impulse, he extended his right hand to Avad. 

Avad hesitated, looking surprised. Then he tentatively grasped Nil’s forearm with a warm smile. He then cleared his throat awkwardly. “By the way, can we… not tell Aloy about my striking you?” His eyes rested guiltily on Nil’s right cheek, where Nil was sure a bruise would soon bloom beneath the cut. 

Nil bared his teeth in a wide feral grin. “Not a chance. She'll guess immediately what happened. But I'll convince her it was my idea,” Nil added, with unusual generosity. 

Avad smiled gratefully at Nil, then snickered uncharacteristically. “It was a good hit, though,” he said, and Nil actually laughed in response as he left the war room to rejoin his woman. 

Nil had always felt utterly indifferent towards his brother, but in this moment, he _almost_ liked him. 

****************

Almost three days later, Aloy, Vanasha, Nil and Taran arrived in Fertile Song. In order to hasten their journey, Vanasha had ridden with Aloy on a Broadhead, and Taran with Nil. 

Aloy’s jaw dropped with dismay as she took in the village. Fertile Song was almost unrecognizable since the last time they’d been here: it was packed with people, the rooftop gardens were stripped bare of food, and there were ramshackle tents and cookfires everywhere. 

_If Utaru refugees have had to move this far north…_ Aloy thought with a jolt of panic. She leapt off the Broadhead and hurried into the village, with Nil close on her heels. 

It wasn’t long before Dara came to greet them. The dark-eyed village head looked older since Aloy had last seen her; her face was drawn with stress, and her eyebrows seemed perpetually contracted into an anxious frown. “Aloy! Nil! Thank the seeds and stars,” she exclaimed. “The Tenakth - they’re moving north, and we can’t stop them. We don’t know what to do. What do we do?” 

Aloy took Dara’s arm in a gentle grip. “The Carja army are on their way,” she said in a soothing but firm voice. “Help is coming. We’ll stop them.” 

“Yes, we will,” Nil drawled as he stepped up behind Aloy. He slid his hand up her back and into her hair, then smiled at Dara. “Your lands will soon run red with rivers of Tenakth blood. Their strength will seep into your crops for years to come. I’m sure the maize will be delicious.” He chuckled. 

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Aloy had to bite her lip to hold back a chuckle at Dara’s horrified face. Nil had become more and more excited and bloodthirsty as they’d moved closer to Plainsong. Now that they had arrived and the idea of battle seemed imminent, Nil was practically seething with joy. Aloy supposed this made sense; it had been a good week since he’d spilled any blood. 

But although she was used to Nil’s bloodlust, she knew his attitude was going to be extremely off-putting for the suffering Utaru. She stroked her hand along his armoured arm placatingly. “Take it easy with the gore while we’re here. Please?” she murmured, and he shrugged acquiescence. Then she turned back to Dara. “A small advance guard of Carja soldiers will be here tomorrow, and the full strength of the army in another day. My companions and I will head south immediately. Do you know where the Tenakth are now?”

Dara shook her head desperately. “But some of these refugees are from The Heartland…”

 _No. No, not the capital,_ Aloy thought with a surge of anxiety and anger as she remembered the lovely town where she and Nil had stayed. She turned to him. “We have to go. Right now,” she said, and he nodded. “Lead the way,” he said easily. 

As Aloy and Nil returned to the Broadheads where Vanasha and Taran were waiting, Aloy glanced worriedly at Taran. In contrast with Nil’s increasing ebullience, Taran had become more and more quiet and withdrawn as they had moved south, and Aloy began to feel guilty that she had asked him to come. 

Aloy and Nil kicked the Broadheads into movement, and Aloy turned to Taran. “Are you alright?” she asked. 

Taran pursed his lips. “Tearing things down is what the Tenakth do best,” he replied in a low voice. “After this… I will be finished with that life.”

Aloy nodded respectfully to him. “Thank you for being here,” she said, and he nodded slightly. 

A half-day’s hard ride brought them to the borders of The Heartland, and Aloy’s stomach dropped in dismay. Even from a thousand paces away, they could see the thick cloying smoke of large fires wafting from the town. 

“Fire and spit,” she swore softly as she and her companions dismounted their Broadheads. 

Vanasha scowled. “The army better be moving their asses quick-time,” she said, and Aloy nodded in wholehearted agreement. “Our plans accounted for the Tenakth being this far north, but I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” she replied. 

“Shall we go scout the situation? See if there’s anyone who needs killing?” Nil suggested brightly.

Vanasha raised her eyebrows and planted one hand on her armoured hip. “Or perhaps anyone who needs, I don’t know, _help_ or _rescue?_ ”

Nil grinned at her. “Sure, if you’re the heroic type who needs a little extra.” 

Aloy ignored them; she’d noticed a furtive movement at the corner of her eye in the sparse forest nearby. Slowly she reached for her bow and tapped her Focus at the same time. 

A human shape was highlighted in purple in the trees: a female Banuk.

“Luka?” Aloy said incredulously, and Taran and Nil both whipped around in surprise. 

Tentatively, the dark-eyed Banuk woman stepped out of the forest, her face painted with uncertainty as she approached them. 

“What are you doing here?” Nil asked in surprise. All signs of jest were gone from his face. 

Luka bit her lip. “I thought… I could help. If you need it.” She glanced at him, then dropped her eyes.

“How did you know we needed help?” Aloy asked curiously. She was just as surprised as Nil. They hadn’t seen or heard from Luka since the day they’d had that drink together at the Hunter’s Lodge. 

Luka raised her eyes to Aloy. “I’ve been in Meridian for the last week or so,” she admitted. “I did go to the desert, but I didn’t find your shaman friend.” Aloy twisted her lips in disappointment at this, and Luka continued. “The Tenakth threat is all they talk about in the city. I heard the Carja army was moving against the Tenakth in Plainsong, so…” She trailed off for a moment, then her sloe-eyed gaze darted back to Nil. “I knew you wouldn’t pass up the chance to fight the Tenakth. So I came here to wait.” 

A pang of sympathy for the smitten Banuk woman jolted Aloy’s chest. She looked at Nil, who was still frowning at Luka in surprise. He shrugged. “All right, join us. It’s not your type of prey, but stick with Taran or me. We’ll help you.” 

Luka gave him a tiny smile and nodded politely to Aloy and Vanasha. Together, the five of them headed quietly along the path to The Heartland. 

Vanasha leaned in to Aloy. “That girl’s in love with your man. You know that, right?”

Aloy pinched Vanasha quickly on the unarmoured underside of her arm. “Shh,” she hissed. Then she jogged over to join Luka.

“This will be extremely dangerous,” Aloy warned her. “You really don’t have to do this.” Aloy felt guilty. She knew Vanasha was right, and she didn’t want to see the Banuk shamaness get hurt for unrequited love.

Luka looked at her, and her face was serious. “I do,” she replied softly. “I went everywhere with these two for many months. This is no different.” She jerked her head at Taran and Nil, who were leading the way and talking quietly together. Then she swallowed hard. “Aloy… I know you and Nil are… and I’m not trying to intrude. But he… he and Taran, they’re the only family I have.” 

“I understand,” Aloy said immediately. After all, Aloy had been an outcast too, with only Rost for family. Maybe someday, when this was all over, she would tell Luka about it.

Maybe they could become friends. 

Luka and Aloy smiled at each other, and Aloy squeezed her arm briefly before jogging over to join Nil and Taran. 

Nil grinned and caressed Aloy’s armoured waist as she drew level with them. “Ready, Stormbird? Do you see anything?”

Aloy was wearing her shieldweaver armour, which flashed and glittered conspicuously with her every step. Nil had always called it her Stormbird armour, with its lightning-bright flashiness. She gave him a quick smile, then tapped her Focus, looked around, and sighed. “We’re still too far out. I’m not picking anything up yet.” 

She tapped her Focus off and frowned at Nil and Taran. “It seems too quiet. Don’t you think? With the level of smoke we’re seeing, there should be… I don’t know. Noise. The sounds of people.”

Taran nodded. “It’s true. There should be a lot more noise. Screams from the vanquished, crying women and children…” 

Aloy looked at him with concern. His face was like stone. She couldn’t help but keep worrying that she’d done him a disservice by asking him to come.

Again, Nil seemed to read her mind, or at least the worried expression on her face. “Keep your mind on the goal, Suntress,” Nil murmured to her. “Everyone is here because they want to be.” 

She took a deep breath, then nodded acknowledgement. 

A short time later, they finally reached the edge of The Heartland, and Aloy felt as though the air had been punched from her lungs. 

The town was decimated. The proud collection of buildings that Aloy remembered was razed to the ground, with nothing left but burning wooden slats and pillars. Murdered Utaru were scattered across the ground like broken ragdolls. The town appeared totally devoid of life.

“Sun’s mercy,” Vanasha breathed. 

Aloy tugged one of her braids in distress. “We should have gotten here earlier,” she said, angry at herself. If only they’d gotten back to Meridian faster. If only they hadn’t spent so much time negotiating and talking. If only-

Nil took hold of her arm. “Stop questioning yourself, Suntress,” he said firmly, but his silver eyes were warm on her face. “We got here as fast as we could. Now tells us what you want us to do.” 

Aloy heaved a deep breath. “Hold on. Let me check my Focus.” She tapped the tiny device. 

More than a dozen orange figures were highlighted in her enhanced vision, and Aloy’s heart ramped up to triple speed. They were surrounded on all sides. “Ambush,” she hissed, and grabbed her bow from her back.

Her companions all grabbed their weapons as a cacophony of Tenakth war screams filled the air. Beside her, Nil laughed wildly, and the sound of his mirth tinged with a hint of insanity somehow made her feel more focused. 

Aloy took out two Tenakth from a distance with swift hardpoint arrows to the chest and throat, and Vanasha took down another warrior with two arrows to the thigh and chest. Then suddenly the ambush party was upon them, and Aloy had no more time to think. She and Vanasha fell into a buddy pair, protecting each other’s backs while Aloy lunged, parried, and struck with her spear and Vanasha sliced and slashed with a curved Carja scimitar. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Nil, Taran and Luka working together smoothly as a team. Luka was as quick as a little bird, dodging and rolling smoothly, but her relative discomfort with human combat was obvious in the hesitancy of her strikes. Taran, on the other hand, was an expert fighter, exactly as Nil had said. In fact, he was quite terrifying; his usual mild-mannered mien disguised an animalistic battle rage that matched Nil’s. _No wonder Nil tolerated him for so long,_ Aloy thought idly as she tripped a Tenakth fighter and stabbed him in the chest. 

The fight lasted a long time. Aloy was exhausted by the time the final Tenakth warrior fell under Taran’s serrated knife. Breathing hard, she looked around at her companions and felt a surge of relief; all bloodied, but all alive and all still supporting themselves upright, though Luka was on her knees and panting with exertion. 

Nil was grinning, his eyes incandescent with macabre glee, but his words were serious when he spoke. “This was unusual. The Tenakth don’t usually do things like this.”

Taran nodded. “He’s right. A sneak attack is not like us. I’ve only ever known our people to plow into battle headfirst.”

Nil stood and looked at Aloy. “We should fall back. A change in-”

A crossbow bolt suddenly sprouted from Nil’s chest, and he stumbled backwards and fell. 

Aloy’s ears were suddenly both pounding with blood and ringing. She had no idea if the scream she heard was her own or someone else’s. Swiftly she crouched in front of Nil to defend him from further assault, her bow raised and an arrow nocked, her Focus on as she scanned their surroundings intensely for the shooter. 

“That’s from Merat, you filthy interloper!” A coarse voice rang out from about fifty paces away, highlighted in brilliant orange from her Focus. Aloy didn’t think twice. She loosed her arrow, and it slammed into the shooter’s throat with such force that he was knocked off his feet, his crossbow falling from nerveless fingers. 

Then Aloy turned back to Nil, unable to breathe through the panic that was washing over her. Luka was already crouched at his side, her hands pressed against his chest to staunch the wound. The bolt was lying on the ground by Nil’s left hand; it looked like he’d ripped it out. Aloy’s panicked eyes scanned over his face, and she was quite shocked to find his eyes open and on her face. “Nil!” she squeaked, and grabbed his face in her hands. 

“I’m fine, Suntress. It’s just a scratch,” he gritted, and a tear slid down her face. He was the one wounded, and yet he was still trying to reassure her?

Despite the pressure of Luka’s hands on his chest, he tried to sit up, then hissed in agony. “Don’t move!” Aloy snapped, placing a hand on his shoulder to keep him still. To Luka, she said anxiously, “Let me see the wound.” 

Luka quickly lifted her hands, and Aloy felt a slight lessening of the panic in her chest… and a surge of rage. The spot where Nil had been hit was almost exactly where she herself had struck Merat with an arrow: the left side of his chest, a couple of inches below the collarbone and deep in the muscle of his pec. The shot didn’t seem to have pierced his lung as he was breathing without difficulty, so it probably wouldn’t be fatal… but if he moved his left arm much at all, he could tear the wound wide open. 

Aloy expelled a long, shaky breath, then forced herself to breathe deeply as she rifled in her medicine pouch and pulled out a handful of salvebrush berries, then began feeding them to him. “You have to stop doing this,” she joked, uncaring about the trembling of her voice. 

Nil chewed the berries and swallowed them with a grimace, then bared his teeth at her in a grin. “I agree. I hate these fucking berries,” he replied, and Aloy smiled tremulously back at him.

“Aloy, we should get out of here,” Vanasha said tensely. “There might be more Tenakth on the way. We should pull back to the nearest town and wait for the army.” She and Taran were standing in a defensive position around Nil, Luka and Aloy, their weapons at the ready. 

Aloy nodded. “Yes, of course.” But her attention was on Luka. With one hand, Luka was keeping Nil’s wound staunched, but with the other she was rifling in one of her own pouches. 

“Here,” Aloy said, and took over the pressure on Nil’s chest. Luka shot her a swift smile, then pulled a small container from her pouch. She unscrewed the container, revealing a greenish-brown ointment, then smeared some of the ointment directly on Nil’s wound. 

Nil grimaced in pain, but didn’t seem surprised by her ministrations. Clearly he’d received this treatment before. “What’s that?” Aloy asked, never able to quell her curiosity. 

“Bloodmoss ointment,” Luka replied. She glanced briefly at Aloy, then double-taked at the avid curiosity on her face. “You’ve never heard of this?”

Aloy shook her head. “What does it do?”

“It stops bleeding for minor to moderate wounds,” Luka replied, and Aloy’s eyes widened in wonder. “It’s made from a moss native to Ban-Ur. Actually, that’s probably why you don’t know of it. It’s a mainstay of Banuk healing.” To Aloy’s relief and utter astonishment, the bleeding had already slowed to a sluggish drip. 

Luka leaned back and stared critically at Nil’s chest. “But it’s not perfect. It won’t stop the wound from reopening if it’s strained. Especially a deeper wound like this.”

“Hear that?” Aloy scolded Nil, even though he hadn’t moved. “You can’t strain the wound. That means no moving your left arm.” 

“You must be joking. I’ll need my left arm to crack Merat’s ribs open and tear out her lungs,” Nil gritted.

Aloy opened her mouth to argue, but Vanasha interjected again. “Aloy, come _on_. We need to go,” she said sharply. Together Luka and Aloy helped Nil to his feet, and they started back the way they had come. 

“That cowardly shit,” Nil suddenly spat, and Aloy knew he was still thinking of Merat. “A fucking sniper with a _crossbow_? She can’t even face me head-on? What kind of Tenakth is she?” 

Aloy gazed worriedly at him as he continued to rant about Merat. She knew he would likely be fine, but her heart was still pounding with fear and worry. His skin was pale from blood loss, and he seemed shaky on his feet. 

_My Carja killer, wounded again,_ she thought, and swallowed hard to shove down the sudden lump of distress in her throat. Instead, she focused on the simmering rage that had bloomed into life when the crossbow shooter had called out his taunt. 

This was the second time that Merat had almost killed Nil in the most cowardly of ways: first with a spear at his throat while he was held down, then via a sniper, not even facing him down herself.

“I’m going to cut Merat down and squeeze the blood from her cooling corpse,” Nil raged. 

Aloy breathed deeply to cool her anger from a roiling ball of rage to a focused arrowhead of fury. _Not if I get there first,_ she thought. 

Merat didn’t know it yet, but she had taken her last cheap shot at Aloy’s man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things: 
> 
> 1\. Okay so I'm sure I'm not the only one obsessed with that line where Nil says “I’m not suggesting a Carja wedding” because WHY NOT NIL, WHY THE HELL NOT. So I made reference to it here. *long, heavy, awkward pause* So… anyone have any thoughts about whether they’d want to read about a Niloy wedding…?  
> 2\. The bloodmoss Luka uses in this chapter is shamelessly borrowed from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Fantastic series, by the way. Highly recommend.  
> 


	15. Tell Me More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy and her companions wait for the Carja army to arrive. Then finally, they face down the Tenakth horde.

The next two days passed with torturous slowness as they waited for the Carja army to arrive. 

Aloy and her companions retreated to a village north of The Heartland called Maiden’s Bounty, where Aloy spent the waiting time crafting ammo, chatting tensely with Vanasha, Taran, and Luka, and cuddling with Nil in an attempt to keep him from moving too much. He was a notoriously terrible patient; when he’d been blasted by Helis’s firebomb two years ago, Petra had told Aloy that they’d had to force Dreamwillow on him multiple times so he would stop thrashing and let his burns heal. Aloy had sort of managed to convince him to rest quietly by reasoning that the more healed he was, the stronger he’d be for fighting once the Carja army finally clashed with the Tenakth. She and Luka kept a close eye on him for signs of infection, but between Aloy’s antiseptic hintergold paste and Luka’s bloodmoss ointment, he didn’t seem to be suffering any major ill effects so far. 

“He really shouldn’t be using that arm when the Tenakth attack, though,” Luka told Aloy in a low voice at one point, when they were out hunting for rabbits. 

“I know,” Aloy admitted. “But try telling him that. He’s so stupid when he gets injured. We might have to confiscate his bow. Or literally tie his arm to his body.” Aloy wasn’t joking; she’d been worrying about this at length ever since they’d arrived in Maiden’s Bounty. It was either worry about Nil or worry about the Tenakth, and worrying about Nil felt more manageable.

Aloy and Luka hunted as many rabbits as they could carry, both for themselves and for the village. As they walked back to the village with their kills, Luka spoke up hesitantly. “I could… stick with him during the battle. Keep an eye on him.” Aloy glanced at her, and she continued speaking quickly. “I’m not the best fighter. You can see that, I’m sure. But you… you’re incredible, Aloy. I don’t know how you got so good even though we’re the same age.” 

Aloy’s cheeks warmed at this compliment, but Luka rushed on. “You’ll be too valuable in this fight to, well… to babysit Nil. But I’m not. I mean… I would hope I’m at least as good a fighter as his left hand. So I could… be his left hand. If that’s okay with you.” She trailed off awkwardly, unable to look Aloy in the eye as they continued back to the village.

Aloy stopped her with a hand on her arm and waited until Luka raised her eyes to her face. “Luka. That would be extremely helpful. Really. Thank you,” Aloy said sincerely. “I’ll be able to actually breathe if someone I can trust will be keeping an eye on him.” She smiled ruefully. 

Luka smiled back in relief. “Good! That’s good. Okay.” They returned to the village in friendly silence.

Back in the village, Aloy and Luka picked their way carefully through the refugees until they found Ilya. The Utaru governor smiled warmly at Aloy, though her face was thin and wan. Her smile widened further when Aloy and Luka handed over the majority of the rabbits they’d hunted. “Aloy… I can’t thank you and your companions enough for everything. First you save us from the ruins of The Heartland, then you bring us food every day…”

After Aloy had gotten Nil settled in Maiden’s Bounty two days earlier, she and Vanasha had run back to The Heartland and looked in the Utaru’s secret hiding places to see if any villagers had taken refuge there. Aloy had been delighted to find Ilya and about sixty other villagers safe in their bunkers. Aloy had used her Focus to make sure the coast was clear, and with Aloy and Vanasha’s assistance, the survivors of The Heartland had managed to escape safely to Maiden’s Bounty. 

“Are you sure you and your people don’t want to go to the Sundom?” Aloy asked for the dozenth time. She had suggested that the Utaru refugees to head north to Carja territory, given how crowded the northern Utaru villages were becoming, but Ilya had refused.

Now, she refused again. “We can’t, Aloy. You’re already doing so much for us. We’ll never be able to pay the Sundom back if we impose on the Carja for shelter as well as protection.”

Aloy frowned, but she now knew the elderly governor well enough to know better than to argue. “All right,” Aloy said grudgingly, then she and Luka bade her farewell and returned to the small camp they shared with Vanasha, Taran and Nil. 

Aloy and Luka sat by the fire and started skinning the rabbits for dinner. Taran was quietly sharpening his spear while Vanasha and Nil seemed to be embroiled in some kind of insult war, and Aloy tried to relax and she listened to the soothing, familiar sound of their arguing.

Together the five companions ate dinner, then settled down for the night. They had travelled lightly with no tents, but the weather was warm and luckily there had been no rain, so they all slept in the open around the fire and took turns with the watch. Tonight, Taran was on watch duty for the first part of the night, followed by Vanasha. 

Aloy made herself comfortable a short way away from the fire beside Nil, with their backs against a boulder. They couldn't sleep curled together as they usually did thanks to Nil’s injury, and Aloy feared that the wound would be torn if Nil lay completely flat, so he slept propped up at a nearly 45-degree angle thanks to a borrowed and rolled-up Utaru blanket, with Aloy curled against the right side of his chest. 

As with every night for the previous two days, Aloy’s mind raced while she settled down against Nil. She _hated_ the feeling of powerlessness that accompanied this waiting. She knew the Carja army was due to arrive the next day, but her scalp crawled with the possibility that the Tenakth might attack before then. If that happened, there was only so much that five fighters and a small number of Carja soldiers could do to hold them back. 

“Suntress.” Nil’s lips grazed her temple. “I can see the thoughts flying through your mind like a volley of haphazard arrows. Be calm. We’ll have our battle soon enough.” 

His deep, mellifluous voice dipped into her worries, scooping away some of her anxiety. “Talk some more,” she murmured. 

Nil chuckled, and she felt the vibration of his amusement through his chest. “Talk about what?”

Aloy didn’t care. She just wanted to hear his voice like a lullaby bringing her peace. “Anything. I don’t mind.” 

“Hmm. I could tell you about the first man I ever killed… that was exciting. Or I can tell you in detail how I killed Helis… that was even more exciting.” His tone was musing, and Aloy smirked at his goriness as she tucked her head more securely against his shoulder. “I know,” Nil finally said. “I’ll tell you about the first time I met a fire demon.” 

Aloy raised one eyebrow. He was going to tell her a children’s story? But Nil continued speaking, his lips close to her temple. “I was minding my business by the river one day, enjoying the bloody fruits of my labours, when a demon ran towards me with hair of flame streaming behind her.”

Aloy grinned suddenly as Nil continued his tale. “I only wanted to warn the demon of the danger ahead, but she threatened me for intruding in the Nora’s Sacred Land. Then she proceeded to audaciously loot my well-earned kills.” 

Aloy laughed. “Hey, I asked before I looted! You said I could help myself!” 

“Mm, so I did. I stand corrected,” he drawled quietly. “Anyway, something incredible happened. The demon agreed to help me, even though her shoulders were heavy with purpose. And then, with a devilish whistle, she summoned a metal beast and rode away.” 

Nil lowered his voice and turned his head closer to hers. “I’d never seen the like in all my travels: a demon of fire who moulded the machines to her will. Little did I know that I’d met the demon with the strength to mould the world.”

Aloy cradled his face in her palm and tilted her chin up to kiss him with all the tenderness she could muster, but it didn’t feel like enough to convey the depth of her feelings. He’d never told her before what he’d thought about their first meeting. His words were making her feel like her chest would burst with the dizzying swell of love.

Slowly she pulled back from the endless temptation of his lips. “Keep talking,” she whispered. 

Nil smiled slowly at her. “The demon met me at the precipice of a bandit camp, and together we rained death upon the scum that squatted there. The demon was young, but her arrows fell with the experience of a grizzled warrior. I was powerless to do anything but follow her trail of blood. After the camp was cleared, the demon left me alone to pursue her heavy purpose. But somehow… I wasn’t really alone. A silken thread of death was sewn between us. How could I have known that a fire demon would lead me to heaven?” 

Aloy carefully wrapped her arms around Nil’s neck, wary of his injured left side, and pressed her cheek to his. “I love you,” she whispered. Why were her words always so paltry, so inadequate? Nothing she could say would ever match the jewels that fell from Nil’s lips.

“I know,” Nil murmured back, and she could feel his smile against her cheek. “I can read the language of your face and your body, Suntress. They tell me everything I need to know.” 

She smiled and gently slid her nose along his cheek until their lips met again. His right arm curved around her waist, and despite the danger looming on the horizon, Aloy felt so incredibly safe. 

“Tell me more,” she whispered. 

********************** 

“Aloy, wake up. The army’s here!” 

Vanasha’s tense, excited voice penetrated Aloy’s sleep, and she immediately sat up, alert and awake. Beside her, Nil stirred and opened his eyes. 

Vanasha was crouched beside them in the dim light of pre-dawn. “Come on, lovebirds, time for some action,” she quipped, but her pretty face was stern with focus. 

Nil grinned. “Finally. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into this juicy fight.” Instinctively he reached down to push himself up with his left hand. 

Aloy grabbed his left wrist to stop him. “Um, about that…” 

He gave her with a hard warning look. “Suntress, don’t think to stop me. I’ve survived much worse wounds. I’m going into this battle.”

 _Stubborn, boarheaded idiot,_ she thought, but with resignation. Aloy had known there would be no talking him down this time. “I know, Nil. But listen. You know you can’t strain that left arm. So Luka is going to be your left arm during this fight.” 

“What?” Nil said with flat disbelief. At that moment, Luka padded over quietly and joined them. Aloy squeezed Luka’s shoulder gently, but didn’t move her gaze from Nil’s face. “Luka will stay with you in case the wound gets strained. You work well together as a pair.” 

“What about you?” Nil said, and Aloy felt a pang in her chest at the wistfulness in his face, as well as a spark of guilt for poor Luka. “We’re down an archer because of your injury,” she told him gently. “I might not be able to stay with you the whole time.” 

Nil was silent for a while, then finally he sighed. “Fine.” He looked at Luka with a faint air of authority in his face. “You’ll need to strike hard. My left arm doesn’t hesitate.” Then he grinned viciously at her. 

Luka smiled back at him, and Aloy felt another sympathetic pang at the warmth in Luka’s face. She squeezed the Banuk woman’s shoulder once more, then they all swiftly prepared to go meet the army. 

At Maiden’s Bounty, they found Uthid speaking intently with Ilya. Aloy wasn’t sure she’d ever been so happy to see the serious-faced general, or the stern red-and-grey of the Carja military’s armour. Uthid nodded briskly to Aloy and her crew as they approached. “Ilya tells me the Tenakth have come as far north as The Heartland,” he said without preamble. “So we will fall upon our secondary plan.”

“That might not work,” Nil broke in as he sidled up behind Aloy. “The Tenakth are not acting as they usually do.” 

“The five of us were ambushed in The Heartland,” Aloy explained to Uthid. “Taran and Nil confirmed that a stealth attack of that nature is not like them. We’ll need to reconsider our approach.” 

“Damn,” Uthid said, but without any real heat; he was well accustomed to swiftly changing plans in the course of a war. “Any theories as to why?” He scanned over their faces, and his eyes briefly widened when he caught sight of Luka, whom he didn’t know, but he didn’t comment. 

Nil and Taran looked at each other, and Nil shrugged his right shoulder. “It’s almost like they’re trying to adopt Carja strategies,” he drawled. “But they’re inept. Their usual approach is still too ingrained, and it contrasts too much with Carja methods.” He tutted ruefully, then said, “Very sloppy. It might actually make them less of a challenge.” 

Nil sighed sadly, then continued, “In theory, Merat should still be the main target of the attack. But I wonder…” He gazed thoughtfully at Taran. “She’s been acting like a coward. She might not lead the charge as expected. But if she’s not acting from a position of strength… the horde may crumble with or without her direction.”

Taran nodded. “I think you’re right.”

Aloy narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “So let’s play to our strengths. We have multiple styles of attack that we capitalize on. They have only one, aside from their sloppy attempts at stealth. The original plan was to meet Merat’s horde head-on, but if we divide our forces a bit, attack them from multiple avenues…” 

Uthid finished her thought. “... we could smash their forces more quickly.” He nodded briskly. “A pincer approach. We’ll send scout teams with snipers and a few canons around the sides of Farmer’s Blessing, but keep the rest of the army here. Funnel the horde towards our main force.” 

Aloy nodded. “I’ll go with one scout team.”

“And I’ll accompany the other,” Vanasha piped up. 

“We’ll meet the horde head-on,” Nil announced with a bloodthirsty smile, and Taran and Luka nodded agreement. 

Later that afternoon, Aloy and a squad of fifty Carja fighters snuck quietly around the western border of Farmers’ Blessing. She’d left Nil with a fierce kiss and a warning to _be careful_ , but for the first time, she only felt slightly anxious about being separated from him in battle. Aloy knew Luka would keep an eye on him, and she had full confidence in Taran’s skills as well. 

It wasn’t long before they heard and saw the horde moving steadily north. Quietly Aloy and a handful of other scouts slithered on their bellies through the long grass to scope out the situation, and Aloy was pleasantly surprised to find far fewer Tenakth fighters than she’d anticipated. 

Almost a hundred less than expected, in fact. Aloy was floored. _Why bother continuing forth if her forces are so diminished?_ Aloy wondered. She couldn’t help but smirk at the thought of how Nil would react. _He’ll be so disappointed,_ she thought. Regardless, this didn’t change their plan. 

Aloy looked around more carefully at the Tenakth warriors, to see if she could pick Merat out from the crowd. Unfortunately she couldn’t use her Focus for this; the enemies were too thick to pick out one individual. But after a bit of scanning, Merat’s blonde cornrows stood out from the crowd. 

Merat was in the middle of the horde, spurring her people on with screamed threats and promises of blood to be spilled. _A coward’s position,_ Aloy thought with a distinctly Nil-like sneer of disdain. In the middle of the horde, Merat would be safe from the initial assaults, and it wasn’t possible to target her from this distance with her bow; Aloy would never be able to get a clear shot. 

_This doesn’t change anything,_ Aloy thought with determination and a simmering anger. _I’m still going to take her down._ Together, she and the other Carja scouts backed away and returned to rest of the squad. 

The plan was for Aloy’s and Vanasha’s squads to signal each other using the reflection of the sun off of a Watcher’s lens. Aloy held up her lens and tilted it to catch the sun; moments later, she saw the return signal flashing from Vanasha’s lens. Aloy smiled, nodded to her squad, and drew her first hardpoint arrow. 

And then the battle began. Aloy, Vanasha, and the Carja archers shot their arrows at the Tenakth along the sides of the horde, while the canon operators targeted the Tenakth towards the back. It wasn’t long before chaos broke out, with Tenakth war screams and thundering footsteps filling the air. Aloy had to admire their attitude in a way; instead of panicking and losing formation at the sudden attack on their flanks, the Tenakth immediately charged towards Aloy’s and Vanasha’s squads, as well as charging forward at full strength. 

Aloy continued with her bow for as long as she could, taking down warrior after warrior with precisely-aimed hardpoint arrows. When the Tenakth warriors drew too close for her bow, she threw herself into the fray without hesitation. Together, Aloy and her Carja squad pushed the Tenakth at the flanks of the horde back towards the centre to funnel them towards the main Carja army as planned. 

It wasn’t long before the sounds of battle ramped up exponentially, heralding the joining of the Carja army’s main forces in the fight. Aloy continued to fight her way through the seething pack of Tenakth bodies until she caught sight of Vanasha, beautiful and deadly in her Carja armour with her scimitar swinging. She then fought her way towards the head of the horde until she spotted Nil, Luka and Taran, working together again as a seamless team, with Luka close at Nil’s left side and stabbing with her short spear with more determination than she’d shown during the ambush. 

_Good,_ Aloy thought with relief. All her friends were accounted for. _Now I can seek my prey._ With that thought, she began to push forcefully back toward the middle of the Tenakth forces, and towards Merat. 

To Aloy’s surprise, it wasn’t long before she caught sight of the blonde-haired Tenakth leader, who seemed to have pushed forward in the horde. Aloy dodged and slipped her way through the roiling battle to get closer to Merat. 

And not a moment too soon, it seemed. Merat gutted an unfortunate Carja soldier with her serrated knife, then lifted a crossbow hanging from her hip and aimed the weapon at a target some distance away in front of her… and Aloy was quite sure she knew who Merat was aiming at. 

Aloy glanced in the direction of the pointed crossbow and sure enough, there was Nil, snarling in the face of a Tenakth warrior that he had just skewered with his beloved knife. 

Aloy felt a fresh surge of ice-cold rage. “Not this time,” Aloy snarled out loud, and she pelted towards Merat as fast as her feet would carry her and _slammed_ her shoulder into Merat’s knees in a hard tackle.

Merat gave a shout of shock, and the loaded crossbow fell from her hands as she fell hard on her side. Aloy had to swiftly pull back as Merat’s serrated knife swung towards her face. Then Aloy drew her arm back and slammed the heel of her hand into Merat’s nose. 

Swiftly Aloy scrambled to her feet, spear in hand as she admired the blood pouring from Merat’s face. Still, she was unpleasantly surprised at the speed with which Merat gained her feet again despite her shattered nose. The Tenakth warrior faced her with a long-handled spear in her hands and an animalistic snarl on her face. “You’ve foiled me for the last time, child,” Merat hissed through her bloodstained teeth. 

“You’re right about that,” Aloy agreed viciously. Then they began their dance in earnest. 

Merat’s long-handled spear effectively kept Aloy farther away than she’d like to be. However, Merat’s stocky muscle was no match for Aloy’s speed, and Merat was further slowed by the wound Aloy had dealt her in Farmer’s Blessing. Aloy’s shieldweaver armour effectively deflected most of Merat’s spear lunges, and Aloy’s rolls and darting stabs soon meant that Merat was bleeding from multiple scratches across her arms, chest, and thighs. 

Aloy panted for breath but smiled viciously. She might be tired, but she knew that Merat was more so. As Merat raised her arms, Aloy darted in to try and stab under the Tenakth woman’s ribs. 

Aloy gasped as a sudden sharp pain flared over the back of her scalp, and her head jerked back as Merat fisted a hand in her long red hair and _pulled_. “This is why I keep my hair bound, you foolish little shit,” Merat snarled in her face. Then suddenly Aloy was on her back with Merat straddling her hips. Merat’s rancid breath was on her face and the handle of Merat’s spear was pressing against her windpipe, threatening to strangle her.

Aloy didn’t bother to gasp for breath. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Merat’s loaded crossbow on the ground, just slightly too far from Aloy’s reach to grab. _She wants to play dirty? Okay, we’ll play dirty,_ Aloy thought vindictively, and she spat a gobbet of saliva full into Merat’s face. 

The momentary startelement was all Aloy needed: Merat’s grip loosened slightly and she reared back. Aloy flung her upper body to the side with all her strength, knocking Merat’s spear away in the process, and grabbed the crossbow. 

Before Merat had a chance to do anything more than look down at Aloy, the crossbow bolt slammed home into her right eye, the tip of the bolt cracking through the back of her skull due to the force of the close-range shot. Merat’s head snapped back at the impact and her weight finally left Aloy’s hips, allowing Aloy to wiggle out from under the Tenakth woman.

Merat’s left eye vacantly followed Aloy as she knelt and pulled the serrated knife from Merat’s sheath. Carefully, Aloy fisted her hand in Merat’s cornrows and pulled her head back. “I’ve _never_ enjoyed killing anyone,” Aloy told the Tenakth warrior softly. “But in your case, I’ll make an exception.” Then she slashed the knife forcefully along the length of Merat’s windpipe. 

The deed was done. Aloy dropped the knife and the dead woman’s body, and suddenly realized with a jolt that a small impromptu arena had formed around herself and Merat. Tenakth and Carja fighters alike were standing in a tight circle around them, watching in silence as the battle continued to rage around them, like the quiet eye of a storm. Instinctively Aloy grabbed for her spear and crouched defensively, her eyes on the Tenakth, but none of them made a move to attack her. 

Her eyes flickered over the Tenakth suspiciously, but most of their eyes were on Merat. And with a jolt, Aloy realized what they probably wanted: to drink her blood. 

A shiver of revulsion ran down her spine. At that moment, there was a disturbance in the ring of warriors around her, and a familiar, well-loved voice reached her ears through the cacophony: “Get the _fuck_ out of my way, or I’ll rip you open and wear your ribcage as a hat.” 

_Nil._ Aloy whipped around to see Nil, Taran and Luka burst through the impromptu ring of soldiers. Luka’s mouth dropped open in shock as her gaze fell on Merat. Nil’s eyes darted from Merat’s face to Aloy’s, and a vicious grin lit his face.

Then Taran stepped forward and kneeled beside Merat. He dipped his fingers into the blood that was still pulsing sluggishly from her throat. He stood and raised his fingers high. “This is for banding the tribes together into the strength of a horde,” he bellowed to the other Tenakth, and sucked the blood from his fingers. Then he pressed his heel on Merat’s throat, accelerating the pumping of her blood as it spilled into the earth. “The rest will disappear to the sands of time for her shame,” he continued. “She led you astray, and you know it.” 

The surrounding Tenakth stirred restlessly, but Aloy didn’t hear any argument. She stared at Taran, compelled by his speech. “Merat made us weak. She spurned our ways. We return to the Bloodlands and regain our strength there, or we risk annihilation at the hands of this Nora and her army.” 

Aloy’s ears burned as Taran gestured to her, but she stood tall and straight, her eyes narrowed threateningly as she looked around at the surrounding Tenakth. 

“Go!” Taran roared. “Spread the word that Merat is dead, and her stories with her.”

Finally, the ring of warriors began to break up and the news of Merat’s defeat began to spread. Aloy continued to feel on edge, her spear held tight in her hands, but it seemed that Nil had been right all along: defeating Merat had taken the wind out of the Tenakth’s sails, and they were ready to disperse. 

She turned to Taran. “You’re going with them, aren’t you?” 

Taran nodded, and his face was serious. “I’m no leader, Aloy. Not really, not like you or Nil. But… leaving the Bloodlands was the coward’s way out.” He sighed in resignation, then bowed his head to her. “I’ll never forget your kindness.” 

Aloy gave him a small smile. “You seem to be more of a leader than you think,” she said softly, and he gave her a rueful smile. 

Then Taran turned to Nil and bowed his head even more deeply. “Nil. If we meet again… I hope it should be on the same side of the spear.” 

Nil smirked at him. “We’ll see.” 

Taran gave Nil an unexpectedly jocular smile, then turned to Luka. “Luka…” 

The small Banuk woman wrapped her arms around Taran’s neck in a sudden hug. “Be well, brother,” she whispered, and Taran gently hugged her back, then walked away with the rest of his tribe. 

At that moment, Vanasha ran over. “ _There_ you all are! What’s going on?” she panted. “What in the Sun’s name did I miss? The Tenakth are just… giving up.”

Luka turned to Vanasha to explain what had happened, while Aloy finally turned her full attention to Nil. 

He was grinning at her. He reached out with his right arm and pulled her close. “You stole my kill,” he told her matter-of-factly. 

Aloy pressed herself carefully against his chest, mindful of the new slashes and cuts that peppered his chest and arms. “I know. I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I know how much you wanted to kill Merat. But she was trying to shoot you in the back! No honour whatsoever.” 

Nil chuckled at her mirroring of his words, and the sound of his mirth was no longer rough with bloodlust; it was warm and tender. “That’s all right, Suntress. I forgive. You’ll find a way to make it up to me.” 

Aloy raised one eyebrow and smiled up into the warm silver glow of his eyes. “Uh-huh. A debt paid in blood, I suppose?”

Nil shrugged and smirked. “Maybe I’ll think of something more creative. We have time now.”

 _We have time now._ Aloy realized that Nil was right. Now that this threat was averted, she and Nil all the time in the world. Suddenly she felt breathless with possibility. 

Aloy abruptly cradled Nil’s neck in her hands and kissed him fiercely, sliding her tongue deeply into the sweet heat of his mouth. Nil kissed her back passionately, and she breathed in his scent of blood and sweat and sweet citrus. 

Their second chance was upon them now, full of shining promise. And Aloy planned to take full advantage of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Four things again - somebody shut me up: 
> 
> 1\. Battle scenes and war stuff are _not_ my forte, nor am I particularly interested in writing them. The relationship stuff is really my passion, and hopefully it’s primarily what you guys were here for anyway. So if this chapter was kind of weak/anticlimactic… I apologize and humbly beg forgiveness. But at least our girl got her revenge!  
>  2\. I stole a line from HBO's True Blood for Nil. Bahahahaaaa I make myself laugh... Anyone catch it?  
> 3\. CARJA WEDDING: I’M GONNA MAKE IT HAPPEN. But not in this story. I’ll do a special edition little multi-chapter fic for that; plans are already underway. I hope that’s ok…  
> 4\. Just one chapter left!!! O_o  
> 


	16. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy shows Nil her idea for how they can stay in touch if they have to be separated.

**Six weeks later…**

“Hold for Identiscan… Genetic identity confirmed. Entry authorized. Greetings, Dr. Sobeck. You are cleared to proceed.” 

The panels of the enormous triangular door slid apart, bathing Nil and Suntress in pale blue light. She gave him a small smile, then stepped somberly through the door with Nil close behind.

Once the triangular door slid shut behind them, Suntress breathed a small sigh of relief. “I’ll never get used to their staring,” she muttered to Nil, then jogged towards a door to the left. She swiped her fingers over the ring of blue and pink light, and it changed swiftly to green. 

“So now I’m the Sacred Companion to the Anointed, am I?” Nil drawled as he followed Suntress through the door. 

She grinned over her shoulder at him, her eyes dancing with laughter. “How else was I supposed to get the Matriarchs to let you into All-Mother? You’re lucky Lansra still keeps her mouth shut around me. I’m pretty sure she almost had a heart attack when she saw you.”

“I don’t really need a blessing, do I?” Nil asked reluctantly, and Suntress snorted a laugh. “Of course not. I just needed an excuse for you to come in here.” She led him down a short flight of stairs.

They found themselves in a large circular hallway that branched off into many other corridors and rooms. The centre of the circular hallway was enclosed with massive curved glass windows, and rightly so: it led down deep into the bowels of the earth, and if Nil peered through the windows, he could see multiple floors below, likely with more hallways below. 

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he began to notice the drawings on the walls: figures painted in bright primary colours that looked rudimentary. Almost… childish. 

He frowned at Suntress as she walked towards a hallway to the left. “What is this place? That other ruin didn’t have paintings on the walls.”

Suntress glanced at him, and though there was a gentle smile on her lips, her eyes seemed sad. “This is… a nursery, I suppose you could say. This is where I was born.”

Nil’s eyes widened, and his gaze darted around the gloomy ruin with more trepidation. “Here?”

Suntress nodded, then took his hand as she walked into a room filled with what looked like very large and empty blaze canisters. Slowly she approached one specific canister and laid her hand gently on its surface. “ _This_ is the… artificial womb where I was… grown,” she murmured. 

Nil took a step closer to the artificial womb. It was empty and still and dark. It looked so inert. Nil smoothed one hand gently over the surface of the artificial womb, surprised somehow to find it cold. It was hard to imagine that his Suntress, bursting with life and fiery stubbornness and passion, had come from such an inert object. “That’s amazing,” he said absently. 

He turned to look at her, and tilted his head as he examined the complex expression on her face. Her eyebrows looked sad, but her eyes and her smile were warm. 

“Come on.” She took his hand again and pulled him out of the room and towards another door, this one shining with a forbidding red circle of light. Suntress stood in front of the door, and a beam of red light scanned over her body. Then the doors slid open, allowing her and Nil to enter.

Overhead, a tinny machine voice spoke: “Welcome to the Lyceum, a place of learning.”

 _Lyceum? What does that mean?_ Nil wondered. Then his eyes widened again in shock as he followed Suntress down a short flight of stairs into an enormous tiered room filled with small stations at even intervals. Each station sported a chair, a small table, and a small pedestal at waist height.

Suntress led Nil over to the closest pedestal. Then, with careful fingers, she reached towards the pedestal and lifted the tiny triangular Focus on the pedestal. She held up the Focus, tapped her own Focus briefly, then gave a small nod and turned to Nil. 

Then she extended the Focus to him. “I want you to have this.” 

Nil’s gaze darted from the Focus to Suntress’s face and back again. “Me? Why?”

She smiled suddenly. “Because you’re the Sacred Companion to the Anointed, you lunkhead. Here.” Suntress took his hand and gently deposited the Focus into it. 

Nil turned the Focus in his fingers and examined it carefully while Suntress continued to speak, her voice becoming serious. “This was my idea for what we can do if we have to be separated. I was thinking of how Sylens used to butt in on my Focus… watch what I was doing and listen in whenever he wanted. And I thought, if I could figure out how he did it… then you and I… we could stay in touch. Even if we’re apart.” 

Nil looked at her, surprised and pleased. “We could talk even when we’re far apart?” he said hopefully.

She smiled at him and took his hand, but her eyes were still sad. “Theoretically, yes. We could even see each other through our Focuses. But in reality… I don’t know how to make the Focuses connect. We’ll need a new network, so I’ll have to figure out how to set that up… Maybe using a Tallneck... and Sylens never told me how he made his Focus connect to mine…” She sighed. 

Nil released her hand and tilted her chin up to look at him. “Suntress, you’ve yet to encounter a task that you couldn’t do. You’ll slay this beast as well. Just give it time.” 

Finally, the sadness washed away from her eyes, and she beamed at him. “Come on, try it on,” she said excitedly. 

Nil shoved down a sudden fluttering of anxiety, then raised the Focus to his right ear. Immediately and with stunning clarity, where there had previously been only dull glimmers of violet light, brilliant displays of flashing purple light and glyphs reading _FARO_ appeared everywhere.

Nil had to fight every instinct in his body to not knock the Focus off of his face, but he was unable to stop himself from jerking with startelement into a defensive position. “Fire and blood,” he breathed in shocked amazement. 

The world was… ablaze with light. How did Suntress stand it? She’d lived her whole life in this overwhelming world of luminescence?

Nil squeezed his eyes shut to break from the brightness for a moment, but he still felt the dazzling brilliance at the backs of his eyes. Suddenly he felt warm hands on his face, and the scent of winterfresh as Suntress pulled him down and rested her forehead against his. “It’s okay,” she murmured softly. “It’ll take some getting used to. You can take it off.” 

Slowly Nil opened his eyes to look at her. Behind her and in his periphery, he could still see the flickering violet displays, but the compassion in her face calmed him. 

Slowly he lifted his face from her hands and turned his head. Then, as he had seen Suntress do before, he raised his right hand and tapped the Focus. 

A web of purple light suddenly surrounded him and Suntress both, and Nil’s jaw dropped. It was like being inside a cage of pure light, and it was beautiful. 

Suntress tapped her own Focus, then smiled up at him, her eyes shining with excitement. “It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” she whispered. “I couldn’t stop playing with it when I was a kid. It drove Rost crazy.” 

Nil smiled down at her. He liked the idea of being enclosed with her in a net of light that nobody else could see. He loved the idea of having a secret with her that nobody else shared. “I like it,” he told her. 

She beamed brilliantly at him, then wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. Nil happily wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back, savouring the strange feeling of safety that came from the network of purple light around them. 

Finally Suntress pulled away and tugged him back up the stairs, chattering excitedly about all the things she could show him now that he had a Focus and all the things he would be able to learn. Nil soaked it all in, enjoying the sound of her enthusiastic voice more than any of her words. 

As they neared the exit to All-Mother, she looked up at him with a wry smile. “So. What do you want to do next? Varl told me there are some bandits troubling that camp at Hollow Fort. Should we go hunting?” 

Nil laced his fingers into hers and smiled down into the brilliant hazel of her eyes. “Soon,” he said. “But not just yet. Let’s just… wander. Together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll follow you into the park  
> Through the jungle, through the dark  
> Girl, I've never loved one like you
> 
> Moats and boats and waterfalls,  
> Alleyways and payphone calls  
> I’ve been everywhere with you 
> 
> Laugh until we think we'll die  
> Barefoot on a summer night  
> Never could be sweeter than with you
> 
> Home, let me come home  
> Home is wherever I'm with you  
> Oh home, let me come home  
> Home is when I’m alone with you
> 
>  
> 
> [”Home”, by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHEOF_rcND8)  
> 
> 
> ******************
> 
> Love every single one of you who have continued to stick with my Niloy!!  
> I’ll catch you guys on the flip side. I have a Carja wedding to plan… ;)  
> xoxo


End file.
